Feeding Schoolchildren Is an Economic Obligation
- Category: Education
- Date 02-07-2006
- 318 views
The World Food Programme recently organised a charity walk, along the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, aiming to raise $100,000 for school feeding in Tanzania. This means that during break time, students would have an opportunity to eat food or porridge. What a welcome development!
Education and good nutrition can go a long way to strengthen the economy. Adequate nutrition is necessary if children are to become fit and productive adults, able to fulfil their responsibilities in life. People who are well-nourished and educated are more productive, able to improve their own incomes and ultimately contribute to the national economy.
Conversely, the prevalence of communities which are menaced by famine as has been the case lately symbolises a wretched economic stance of a nation. Thus fighting hunger must be a national precedence and the school is a legitimate entry point.
A country’s educational system necessarily derives staid inefficiency from poor nutrition which also takes its toll on the health of schoolchildren. It is nearly impossible to talk of economic development without talking about education which in turn thrives on proper feeding.
Education is the key to reducing poverty, yet it is from poverty that hunger starts. Provision of food for schoolchildren is a double-ended tool to both fight hunger and promote education. When school meals are offered, enrolment, attendance, and retention rates will increase significantly.
Poor nutrition among school-age children diminish their cognitive development either through physiological changes or by reducing their ability to participate in learning experiences. Nutritional and health status are powerful influences on a child’s learning and on how well a child performs in school.
Moreover, most children have extra demands such as performing family chores and walking long distances to schools, which create a need for energy. Thus, if the children’s nutrition improves, it advances their health almost automatically, and consequently leads to better school performance.
For a country which is yearning for development, all ways to educate the young citizens must be explored. The School-based nutrition can motivate parents to enrol their children in school, ensure that they attend regularly and keep them there longer. Thus, absenteeism will reduce, and educational results improve since feeding helps to increase students’ attention and concentration, which in turn boosts cognitive functioning and overall learning.
However, a school feeding programme cannot succeed without the involvement of the victims of hunger who are the target beneficiaries. Communities ought to be involved in the programme i.e. when the community participates in organising and implementing school feeding programmes certain advantages arise.
It brings about solid contact and communication between parents and teachers, and thus makes parents more aware of what goes on at school, thereby raising the value of education for parents and the whole community. An important ingredient however is that parents and communities must be educated to feed their children if the programme must succeed.
Educating parents, parents-to-be and other family and community members, as well as providing resources to correct deficiencies, will help decrease the risk of children growing up amidst famine and its attendant shortcomings. Many studies report significant links between nutritional status and cognitive test scores or school performance. Children with more adequate diets score higher on tests of factual knowledge than those with less adequate nutrition.
Thus feeding the pupils is one way of teaching them the value of adequate nourishment which they might practice throughout life. Educating children about good eating habits has the potential to enhance the nutrition and health status of their siblings and other family members who learn along with their children.
Targeting schools for feeding programmes is a sure way of reaching the majority of the society’s children, and accessing young people at a critical age of their development. School age is the time when lifestyles are developed, tested and adapted through social interactions within families, and with peers, teachers and other adults. No doubt, economic development is the ultimate long-term product.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen