The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is classified as a Least Developed Country (LDC) and Low Income Food Deficit Country (LIFDC). The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been successfully running a school feeding program since 2002, in close cooperation with the Lao Ministry of Education.
Laos is an ethnically diverse country, with many of the 49 officially recognized groups living in isolated areas and many people in these groups who cannot fluently speak the national language, Lao. The quality and levels of access to educational services are poor, especially in the vast mountainous and remote areas of the country. Many villages do not have complete primary schools (grades 1 to 5). Children often have to walk long distances to be able to even complete primary education.
We talk about education and school feeding in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) with Ms Karin Manente, WFP country director in Vientiane.
How many children are benefiting from the WFP school feeding programs within the country?
In 2008, WFP assisted almost 90,000 schoolchildren in three Northern provinces of Laos, with the total number of beneficiaries — including the children, their families, and the village cooks and storekeepers — reaching over 290,000 people. This year is a very important one for school feeding in Laos. We have expanded our activities to three more provinces in the South of the country, reaching 24,000 more students in the first phase. We will reach almost 40,000 students in total once the expansion has been fully rolled out.
By September 2010, the expansion will bring the total number of schoolchildren assisted to over 130,000, and the total number of beneficiaries in Laos to almost 430,000 people.
Discuss what effect the meals have on the children in terms of school attendance, performance and nutrition.
Since the start of school feeding in 2002, we have seen a vast improvement in school enrollment figures in our target districts. In 2002, net enrollment rates in primary schools were 60 percent for boys aged six to ten years, and 53 percent for girls. In 2008, they had risen to 85 percent and 79 percent, respectively. The attendance rates in schools supported by school feeding are also very encouraging.
In addition to this, WFP has a partnership with UNICEF in a project called ABEL (Access to Basic Education in Laos), which is funded by AusAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid agency. Through this project, a comprehensive educational package is delivered to the villages. In more than 100 schools in 2008, UNICEF developed “Schools of Quality”, ensuring that the students benefit from a healthy and safe school environment as well as modern learning methods and materials, while WFP provides food assistance to the children at school.
Article comments