“I don’t want conflict to be part of my life. Guns need to be silenced.”
How a WFP initiative is helping children build a better future for South Sudan
Children the world over, have the inherent right to love, food, shelter, education, happiness, the right to play and enjoy childhood in a peaceful environment. Sadly, many South Sudanese children have experienced the ravages of war firsthand. More than two million children, or over 70 percent — mostly girls — are out of school in South Sudan, putting both their futures and the future of the country at risk.
“Peace is a place where people don’t cry.”
At the Straight Links Orphanage Center in the capital Juba, WFP’s school feeding programme is helping transform lives through education. The children, tens of thousands strong have been directly effected by the conflict and shattered by pain, loss, hunger, loneliness, homelessness, and being robbed of their childhood far too soon. The orphanage has become a center of refuge for many children and an oasis of education and healing.
A better future for all
Whilst the trauma of the country’s conflict remain etched in their minds, the dream of peace and making a difference in the lives of others is very much alive in their hearts. The majority of children dream of becoming doctors and pilots, and wish for their siblings and future generations not to go through the same experiences they endured. Their wish may very well become a reality as the country recently formed a transitional government of national unity that should usher in lasting peace.
These are some of their stories:
Louis Atura, 14
Born in Yambio, some 355 km east of the capital, Louis was forced to flee to Juba following fighting in her village.
“In conflict people die, gun shots are everywhere” she says. “After my father passed away my mother struggled to feed us and to take care of us.”
Louis could barely hide her tears while talking about her mother.
“I am sad because I feel for her. Peace is a place where people don’t cry,” she says. “My dream is to complete my education, become a doctor to help others and to help my mother.”
Siama James, 11
“For a while I was not able to go to school and we used to eat from our neighbors. The food was not enough, and we used to eat only once a day,” explains 11 year old Siama.
Thanks in part to school meals provided at school, she and many students like her have enough energy to concentrate in class and make lots of friends. In school, Siema’s favourite subject is social studies and that’s no a surprise, because she is so much into people and society.
“When I eat, I can read the books, If I am hungry I cannot,” she says. “I love people, but I don’t see everyone loving each other.”
Cristine Beyonce, 11
South Sudan’s civil war forced millions of people to seek refuge in neighbouring countries and some have since returned. Cristine is one such returnee. Life as a refugee is full of restrictions and long journeys. Cristine experienced this at an early age when her family escaped to Kenya in 2016.
“I was scared, moving from place to place,” she says.
Now back in Juba, Cristine and her mother are building their lives again. Her mother re-married and she is in school, but something is still missing, she says — freedom.
“I still don’t feel free, I want freedom and happiness all the time,” she says. “Now that I have a baby sister, I am so happy. I don’t want her to face the same problems that I faced, we need peace.”
Mark Lokeno and Anyang William, 19
Anyang and Mark spent their whole adolescence in the orphanage. Both of them lost their parents and found strength in their dreams of being educated. For Anyang the turning point was a tribal conflict in his village. He had to run to the bush for safety but in the process, he got separated from his mother. After the attackers went away, he took a boat to Juba with his neighbours.
“They took care of me, but then moved to Uganda and left me behind,” he says.
Fortunately, he found a new family in his fellow boarders and new opportunities in the school.
“They are like my brothers, Mark is my best friend. In future I would like to motivate others to be educated, I want to be proud of myself”
“Cattle raiding was very common in my village, my father was killed and one day I saw a man being shot in front of me. At that moment I decided that I had to leave Kapoeta. That was not the life I wanted for myself,” explains Mark.
In South Sudan, cattle are a symbol of wealth among herding communities and play a key role in many aspects of life, such as marriage, where dowry can cost up to 500 herd of cattle or more giving rise to attacks by young men in search of wealth.
Mark fled to Juba where he had to live in the streets struggling to find shelter and food.
“I used to see kids on their way to school and I wanted to be like them, now I am here, and this is my final year, soon I will graduate!” he explains. “I don’t want conflict to be part of my life, guns need to be silenced.”
WFP response
By providing meals, WFP is transforming lives every day. In 2019, WFP assisted over 1,000 schools across South Sudan providing a meal to almost 460,000 children helping to reduce malnutrition, supporting education and promoting development.
Increasingly, WFP is moving towards a more home-grown type of school feeding by locally sourcing some of the food needed for the school meals from smallholder farmers. This links rural smallholder farmers with a predictable market and in the process stimulate agricultural production. Additionally, the programme facilitates the establishment of school gardens to provide an opportunity to teach children about the importance of a diverse and nutritious diet and learn some basic agricultural skills.
With the prospect of peace and sustained funding from donors such as Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Germany and the United States, more and more people are going back to farming, there are opportunities to expand the home-grown school feeding further in the future.
Learn more about WFP school meals
Additional reporting by Gabriela Vivacqua
