ADRA Malawi joins the school feeding initiative

By Elias Banda

ADRA Malawi has joined a band wagon of other organizations to implement the community based school feeding program targeting 40 primary schools in 23 education districts of Malawi, responding to the nutrition challenges faced by learners in schools.  The project, which officially started in November 2013 under the name Nutrition and Access to Primary Education (NAPE) is being funded by Deutsche Gesellschft Fur Internationale Zusammenarbueit (GIZ) , through GOPA   Consultants.

 Out of the 40 schools, ADRA Malawi is targeting 12 located in 6 districts of Phalombe, Mulanje, Machinga, Mwanza,  Chiradzulu and Balaka.  Other organizations implementing the project are CADECOM and Total Land Care targeting 14 schools each. The NAPE project would span for 9 months as a pilot phase until September 2014.

NAPE staff under going project orientations in Blantyre

According to Emma Jakobo ADRA Malawi Action for Social Change (ASC) Program Manager, the objective of the project is to empower communities to develop, establish and operate on a continuous basis a sustainable school meal program at the primary school with resources generated within the community. She said the community would be responsible for the provision of food while the project would give them farm inputs and build their capacity for them to provide the school nutrition requirements.
At ground level of implementation, the project would collaborate with school committees, teachers and parents while at district level the project would work hand in gloves with district education authorities and nutrition coordinators.