President Obama has unveiled the Feed the Future program to attack the global hunger and poverty crisis. For this initiative to succeed, it has to supply children with the foundation for their future — food and education.
That is why a UN World Food Programme (WFP) effort to provide take-home rations for school children in Yemen is so critical. WFP had originally planned to provide rations for about 115,000 girls, to be distributed at school.
The food serves as an incentive for parents to send their children to school. The girls receive their education and return home with food for the family, which acts as a stabilizing force as they try to break out of the hunger and poverty trap.
In the first year of the program, attendance among girls in the participating schools went up 60 percent. But this success was short-lived. The "silent tsunami" of high food prices in 2008 forced a reduction in rations. But things would get worse.
Lack of funding for WFP forced a complete suspension of Food for Education in June, 2009. WFP monitoring confirms that dropout rates have increased since then.
Finally, in April/May of 2010 WFP and Yemen's Ministry of Education were able to distribute food to more than 80,200 school girls and their 562,000 family members. This was a limited distribution and the size of their rations was also reduced because of the funding shortfalls.
Without new funding, there will probably be no more distributions this year, and no expansion of school feeding.
School feeding for all children would do so much to provide stability in Yemen. This is especially true in Saada, a governorate in the north, which is trying to forge a peace process following the conflict there between the government and rebels. School meals are an important stop on the road to peace.
When you combine this school feeding with building local food production capacity, you help both children and the economy. So it's vital that school feeding initiatives like the one in Yemen don't get derailed because of lack of funding.
Maria Santamarina, a WFP officer in Yemen, visited schools in the Rayma governorate that took part in the May Food for Education distribution. She describes the school district there and shares some stories of the students who have benefited from WFP. Her report shows the importance of why children in Yemen need nourishment for their bodies and minds. Here is her report:
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