School Feeding Program

Over the recent years, poverty levels in Zimbabwe have been increasing continuously. Both flooding and drought had severe consequences on food security, resulting in more than 4 million people being food insecure. Since the government stopped providing maize to supplementary feeding programs for schools, especially children from more vulnerable families are facing a challenging situation. In order to improve attendance by pupils in schools Hilfswerk International is implementing a supplementary school feeding program to provide students in the most affected schools with nutritious meals.

The project is to be implemented in the district of Chimanimani, which is part of the agro-climatic zones 4 and 5 of Zimbabwe. These areas are prone to unpredictable and very erratic rainfall, have poor soils that are mostly sandy and infertile and a regular cycle of drought which severely restrict agricultural activities. One third of the children are not able to attend school due to hunger, there are even several reported cases of primary-school pupils collapsing at school.

The overall goal of the project is to strengthen the affected schools in managing the food security of the attending pupils in times of drought and extreme climatic circumstances and to improve food security among the pupils and their families.

The specific objective is to reduce the vulnerability of 6,050 children and their families affected by food insecurity due to the drought induced food shortages in Chimanimani district through a supplementary school feeding program at 11 schools.

• Identification of the most vulnerable children affected. This process is done together with the Chimanimani District Rural Council and the Ministry of Education
• Designing a distribution process and selecting suppliers of Mahewu, rice and peanut butter
• Carrying out procurement and delivery on site
• Providing and distributing a cup of Mahewu (a nutritious cereal drink) in the morning and a cup of rice with peanut butter per pupil at lunch break

6,050 children under 14 years in 11 schools in Chimanimani district