Monrovia – Lack of funding is impeding school feeding program in Liberia and the World Food Program says it may drastically scale down its school feeding program, if additional resources are not made available by the end of 2016.
Report by Willie N. Tokpah – [email protected]
World Food Programme Country Director to Liberia, Julie MacDonald, said the school feeding program was the largest unconditional social safety net, but was losing its grip due to limited funding.
“The Ministry of Education in conjunction with the Government of Liberia undertook an assessment in early 2016, an assessment that led to the expansion of the number of students benefiting from school meals from 127,000 to 300,000.
Unfortunately, the school program is critically short of funding,” MacDonald said.
The Government of Liberia has recognized school feeding as that organic program that offers the Liberian child the chance to continue schooling in line with the objective of government’s free, compulsory primary education policy.
As a result of the barrier affecting school feeding, WFP and the Ministry of Education are transitioning the school meals program to the home-grown school feeding program that will be more sustainable and adaptable to the Liberian scenario.
Home-grown school meals is about linking local schools to local smallholder farmers, where local farmers will produce food that is then purchased for use of school meals, maximizing the benefits for students, farmers and local communities.
MacDonald told FrontPage Africa recently that WFP and partners had been working since 2015, to establish a home-grown school feeding Program in Liberia that would address impediments due to lack of funding.
“The pilot phase was launched in June 2016 in Nimba County and is currently on-going in six schools and expanding to 12 schools. The aim is to gradually hand over the ownership and implementation of school feeding to government,” the WFP Country Director stressed.
Moreover, WFP MacDonald said her agency was further providing take-home rations, including rice and vegetable oil to over 4,000 adolescent female students in upper grades, where gender disparities are high. This is in an effort to encourage enrolment of female students and continuity in school.
According to her, forging school meals program in partnership and integrated comprehensive education packages would catalyze school meals into educational achievement and opportunities.
She emphasized the vital role innovation plays in ensuring that partnerships catalyse and drive change, while also rallying ordinary people around the globe to take action against hunger affecting children.
“The World Food Program highlights the need for bold and constructive partnerships between governments, business and organizations that will create the requisite momentum towards achieving zero hunger and shaping a brighter future for millions of children,” MacDonald said.
Livelihood Assets and Market Promotion
The World Food Program has at the same time noted that it was working with the Ministry of Agriculture and partners in areas of livelihood assets development, market linkages and promotion for small holder farmers, nutrition, capacity development and supply chair logistics operation aimed at ensuring long-term and impact-based development for rural women to become more self-sufficient.
“As we are all aware, Liberian women constitute majority of the agriculture labor force, predominantly in smallholder agriculture, the sector that employs most of the population. They are reported to produce about 64% of all the outputs in food crops and their access to cash crops is, however, limited,” she said.
She said poverty was a driving force affecting 57% of women and 54% men, but said the intervention of WFP had supported vulnerable women smallholder farmers who have limited access opportunities and technology.
“This has, moreover, elevated the status of women in the agriculture value chain and their economic empowerment, which has had a particular focus on building leadership and decision-making capacity of women in the agriculture sector through the strengthening of women’s groups,” McDonald iterated.
Zero Hunger Support Strategic
At the same time, WFP is supporting government and people of Liberia in efforts toward identifying gaps, challenges and what is needed for the country to achieve the zero hunger goal by 2030.
This strategy, led by Governance Commission’s Chairman Dr. Amos Sawyer, MacDonald said review process as a country-led transparent and participatory process for all Liberians and is aimed at establishing Liberia’s priorities to meet the zero hunger goal.
The WFP Country Director: “No matter what we do in health, education, sanitation, economic development and others areas of development, we must first ensure that everyone, especially children have access to sufficient nutrition food, not just survive but to thrive.”