Yonas Awoke (alias) is a grade 4th student at Berihane Hilina Primary school at Addis Ababa. He lives with his parents and two sisters on the street. It is so difficult to learn especially paying attention for the teacher with no food he said. Fortunately the school feeding program in his school has helped him attend his education with full focus.
Hence he is very happy by the program because he can get his breakfast and lunch at school like all friends. “I was forced to stop going to school as my parents do not afford to feed the family. But now the school has helped me to be back to my class. Now I am glad to follow my education like my peers with this school feeding program.”
He said. School feeding program has scored a history of more than a couple of decades in Ethiopia structurally. Especially during the last three years the government in collaboration with World Food Program (WFP) has allocated more than one billion birr for school feeding program benefitting about 6.7 million students. However, the federal government is set to allocate the budget for the states and the two administrative cities for the current year as Ato Bereket Akele advisor of general education for the minister of ministry of education told for The Ethiopian Herald.
Despite the federal government is on the way to allocate budget for the current year, five regions which are Oromia, Afar, SNNPR, Amhara, Ethio Somalia and Addis Ababa city administration has allocated 268,746,433 birr by taking the program as investment rather than expenditure in collaboration with WFP.
As a result, they are feeding 843,146 students on 2,000 schools in the stated parts of the country. “In the current year Addis Ababa city administration has allocated 168 million birr for school feeding program for about 221 governmental schools that are found in all sub cities. Hence, 51 000 thousand children have been covered by the school feeding program.
The office of the First Lady has also allocated 22 million birr and feeding 51 thousand students by feeding them twice a day. Among them, 30 to 40 percent are destitute children” said Bereket. As to him, in Addis Ababa all students in a given school do not benefit from the program. But, in regions all students in the selected schools are beneficiary because the schools are selected as they are affected by natural disaster like flood, drought and conflicts. And the priority is given for hot spot or chronically food insecure areas. Currently the Ministry of Education has prepared a strategy that can help implement the program effectively.
The strategy has included all directions that it will cover until 2030. Moreover, the strategy is incorporated in the road map of the ministry. Yohanis Wegasso, School Improvement Program Directorate Director with the Ministry said that the government is striving for applying the program across the country by identifying the law socio economic status and food insecure areas.
The program is very essential for reducing short term anger at school, supporting member of the society which are backward in education. As to him the school feeding program must be the prior task to be implemented as it was included under the 5th education sector program by the reason children should have holistic development.
Afterward, promoting of home grown school feeding is the next action to be taken in order to support the program. Yohanis also noted that the finance source for this program after a decade must be from the community, the government, domestic investors and Diaspora. Ashenafi Getachew focal person on the school feeding program from the ministry stated that the program can also reduce the parents load in addition to the outcomes which can be seen at building quality education. Children who are benefiting in the program can build their initiation for education, for following their teachers attentively and increasing their class participation.
Apart from this the program is aiming for reducing the rate of school dropout. For this reason they can get their breakfast and lunch at their school from the program , but they still have to find their dinner. Before this program was launched, there were many students who collapsed out of starvation and medical examinations indicate that most of the students has no any glucose amount in side of their body which was because of the lack of food said Daniel Amente the school director.
He then appreciated that what the office of first lady, the government, the city administrative, supporting organizations are doing on the school feeding program for saving the life of those children. For the current year 336 children are included in the school feeding program and taking their meal twice a day hence, the budget source is the city administrative. Daniel also noted that the program has vital role in improving teaching learning activity in the school. Apart from the street children HIV positive children are also beneficiaries in the school feeding program at the school.
Herald January 19/2019
BY HIZKEL HAILU
