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School meals deliver fresh lesson

While Namilongo Primary School in  Zomba District has no computers or high tech, it does have a deep respect for learning and inclusion.

Walking into Felix Malinda’s office at the school felt like stepping into a different world.

There was no technology in sight, just posters and papers covering the walls and Malinda’s wooden desk.

The only cutting-edge equipment around were cameras, capturing images of the school, its teachers and students.

Volunteers prepare porridge with ingredients produced
by local farmers. | Courtesy of World Food Programme

Sharply dressed in a grey suit and striped tie, the headteacher, Felix Malinda, described his deep esteem for his students and fellow teachers.

Hand-drawn posters were plastered across his large, airy office, listing projects like a school improvement plan and reminders that “vulnerable children have a right to education”.

It felt like a space where students and teachers shared a mutual sense of responsibility and respect.

World Food Programmes  (WFP) partners with primary schools like Namilongo to buy the ingredients for school meals from local farmers.

 It is a win-win for the entire community, they say.

Students benefit from fresh, nutritious meals. Farmers benefit from steady clients for their fruits, vegetables and legumes.

Parents, most of whom are farmers, know their children are attending schools that feed both stomachs and minds.

This is a huge boost for the country where rain-fed agriculture employs over 80 percent of the population, but many people either live hand-to-mouth or grapple with chronic hunger amid frequent and devastating weather shocks caused by climate change.

The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee estimates that over 5.7 million people in the country require food aid from last October until the next harvesting season in April this year.

This has affected children’s health, education and well-being.

Findings show school feeding initiatives, including WFP’s school meals programme in the country, help reduce absenteeism and increase attendance.

However, the potential windfalls are much bigger: producing returns on investments in areas, ranging from local economies to health and gender equality.

That is key for Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, where more than five million people are food insecure.

Extreme weather, including an El Niño-sparked drought in the past year, has hit smallholder farmers, who account for 80 percent of the population.

“In the past, our learners would drop out of school due to various reasons, including poverty and hunger,” headteacher Malinda said. “That has stopped since the locally sourced meals programme “and we have noticed that the school’s enrolment is growing.”Filming the headteacher was the last task of the day.

We had spent the morning photographing his students eating a WFP-supported porridge and captured images of an English grammar lesson.

The focus was on 14-year-old Hapsa, a girl about the same age as my daughter.

“My children are benefiting from this project because their nutrition status has improved and I’m able to buy them clothes,” said Hapsa’s mother, Matrida Chikoko.

The woman is one of the farmers supplying produce to Namilongo. Her two boys also attend the primary school.

“They eat breakfast every day at school,” Chikoko added. “I observe healthy bodies in my children because they eat diversified food, whereas at home I used to feed them only nsima [maize meal] with a vegetable sauce].”

I still think about Hapsa, who is about the same age as my daughter.

What kind of life would we have had my family been born in Malawi? I imagine my daughter attending Namilongo primary school and how its values of care, respect and education would make any parent proud.

WFP has supported the government of Malawi with the provision of school meals since 1999.

The United Nations emergency food agency covers about 500 schools in eight districts.

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