‘Had it not been for the meals, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today’
Jillo’s story shows how school feeding can change as well as save lives
Jillo Konsicha sits quietly in her office sifting through files to get the latest market prices of food in her district. As a local government official in Ethiopia, it’s one of many tasks she has in ensuring surrounding communities have enough food on their plates each day.
Jillo can relate to these people as well as anyone.
As a child from a poor pastoralist family, she recalls her parents sending her to school solely for the meal that was provided there each day.
“I cherish those five years of my life at elementary school”
“I used to walk for over an hour to reach my school in the morning with an empty stomach, but thanks to WFP the school meals were awaiting us,” Jillo says. “I cherish all those five years of my life at my elementary school where I grew up eating the biscuits, porridge and soups. I still recall those good times whenever I see WFP vehicles and logos.”
WFP meals provide the incentive for parents to send their children to school, where they can receive not only nutritious food but also the education that can help change their lives.
There’s no better example than Jillo, whose schooling set her on the path to a successful career. From Dirre Elementary School she went to Jimma University and graduated in Rural Development, before securing her current position as a Disaster Risk Reduction Expert in the Arero district of Borana zone in Oromia Region.
It’s a critical role, monitoring weather conditions for potential threats, and gathering and sharing information on food prices, distribution issues and potential obstacles. For Jillo, life has come full circle, as she works closely with WFP and also acts as a government focal point for the agency’s targeted supplementary feeding activities — which provide specialized nutritious foods to treat moderate acute malnutrition.
“I remember I was often eager for Monday to come to go to school, not actually for the education but for the food,” recalls Jillo with a smile. “Had it not been for the meals, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. I’m happy to be attached to and working very closely with WFP.”
Like Jillo’s parents, pastoralists’ only assets in this drought-prone area are still cattle that can provide their children with milk. This is only possible when the animals have good grazing and are capable of giving milk.
Boranas, a pastoralist community and sub-ethnic group of the Oromo people , are not usually keen to send their female children to school, for cultural reasons. To help address this, WFP created an incentive whereby girls who attend 80 percent of school days in a given semester are also entitled to two litres of cooking oil per month as a take-home ration for their family. It was a popular move among families, given oil is an expensive item.
“I remember how my parents were happy when I was bringing home a can of vegetable oil and how they were encouraging me to attend my classes regularly,” Jillo recalls.
Unlike in the past, this is one reason one can see a greater number of girls than boys in most of the elementary schools nowadays. Negative attitudes towards education for girls also seems to have diminished among communities in Arero district, perhaps partly due to the endless admiration Jillo receives from local people in Meta Gefersa town, where she now lives and works.
“WFP involves parents in the programme as a means to create sense of ownership.”
School feeding in this remote area has run for ten years, helping many other boys and girls like Jillo to move into higher education and secure jobs that can change their own lives. In total, thousands of students in 16 schools in the area have benefited from the programme.
WFP’s school feeding activities include involving parents and the surrounding community with education on nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, food storage, preparation and management.
“WFP involves parents in the programme as a means to create sense of ownership and to make them aware that they will one day fully handle feeding programme when WFP’s programme phases out,” said WFP’s Field Monitor Hussein Hassan.
WFP has also introduced home-grown school feeding to provide safe, nutritious, culturally favoured foods, sourced locally from smallholder farmers. This has the added benefit of creating jobs and boosting the local economy. This approach is used in Oromia Region and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region.
Unfortunately, WFP was forced to quit the school feeding programme in Arero district recently, due to lack of funding.
WFP is grateful to the support of France, Japan and USAID for their support to school meals activities over recent years.
Overall, WFP plans to assist 340,000 students in Ethiopia with school meals through the rest of the year. WFP also plans to provide nutritious meals to 315,000 students in Oromia, Somali and Afar regions. Unless more funding is forthcoming however — US$5 million is needed in total — this may not be possible.
Saar Abduba is head of the education office for Arero District and was also Jillo’s ex-teacher. He believes the cuts have resulted in high drop-out rates in most of the schools within the district.
“You can’t think of seeing children travelling 10 km on foot to school with an empty stomach these days,” Saar said. “Coupled with the current drought, this year is the highest drop-outs we’ve seen. School feeding is the life of our students. The untimely termination of the programme would mean not keeping our promises to our children.”
