UN To Provide Meals To Over 530,000 South Sudanese Children

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday signed an agreement with South Sudan to provide meals to more than 530,000 children in the country.

The meals will be provided in 1,100 schools across the ten states for a period of 19 months.

Adeyinka Badejo, WFP Deputy Country Director for South Sudan, said the MoU signed with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction was aimed at increasing enrollment and encourage parents to keep children in school.

“We will be focusing on schools which are in more vulnerable areas where the level of food insecurity is high and where participation in education is low and where nutrition rates are concerning,’’ Badejo told journalists in Juba.

Kuyok Abol Kuyok, Undersecretary in the Ministry of General Education and Instruction, Sudan, said that the project would enable them to provide school meals to over half a million children in school across the country.

“This programme is one of the strategies we have to improve education in South Sudan and we are very grateful to the World Food Programme and donors,’’ said Kuyok.

The school feeding program was introduced in the then Southern Sudan in 2003 prior to independence from Sudan in 2011, with the aim of enhancing access to food.