Food For Education

A challenge facing many schools in rural Nepal is low student attendance. The vast majority of families in Gurje rely on their land as their source of income and daily meals, children are expected to work in the fields and this is given higher priority than school. 

This culture makes it very difficult to break the cycle and move away from subsistence farming that, in effect, keeps the people of these poor rural communities struggling to keep above the poverty line for generations.

For the children that do make it to school, many of their day's lessons are lost on them as without a hearty breakfast many of these malnourished children fin it near impossible to concentrate or retain any information. 

A Food For Education programme was developed to combat this cycle. A nutritious meal is provided every morning. This meal not only sets the children up for the day but it is also an added incentive for the family and the child to go to school every day.

Gurje School was used as the first school for this programme. The programme has been running there for the past twelve months and in this time the attendance has risen from 10 children attending school on a regular basis to 110! The FFE Programme has now started in 3 more school, bringing the total number of kids being fed each morning up to 250.

The programme is funded and supervised by Umbrella. Kitchens have been built in each school and biogas units were installed to fuel the programme. Biogas plants are fed with buffalo dung, provided by the women's groups, and it then produces sufficient gas to cook Dal Bhat for all the children.

It is up to the community to manage the programme. The local women's groups also benefit from the programme as it creates a market for their vegetables.