Schoolchildren in Libya are often faced with numerous food and nutrition problems that severely impact their educational and learning outcomes.
About 38.1 percent of children under the age of five in the country are suffering from stunting as a result of chronic malnutrition, data from the Global Nutrition Report shows.
Insufficient intake of food and nutrients to support growth at an early age puts them at risk of stunted growth, poor brain development, weak learning, low immunity, increased infections and potentially, death.
As part of efforts to achieve goal two of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the World Food Programme (WFP) has been supporting the country with school-feeding projects.
‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’, the SDG two reads.
The WFP, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, recently launched the Central Kitchen project in the Garyounis School in Benghazi, to provide nutritious meals to 7,000 children from 13 schools across the city.
The aim of the project, it is understood, is to enhance schoolchildren’s ability to learn, as well as increase attendance and retention rates in some of the most rural parts of the country.
It also aims to provide schoolchildren with a lunchbox consisting of a sandwich, fresh fruit, a dairy drink, a fortified date bar and clean water at school every day.
Development Diaries gathered that the contents of the lunchboxes are chosen based on the food available locally and nutritional benefits to schoolchildren.
‘In addition, WFP has also provided essential kitchen equipment as well as trainings on meal preparation, handling, and packing to some 30 young people from the community, around 12 of whom are women’, WFP said in a statement.
The UN programme noted that the project will also generate income for communities, smallholder farmers and traders since food items will be sourced locally.
‘This is a milestone for children who live in the most rural parts of Libya. An investment in school feeding is an investment in the health, education and future of a child as well as the future of the nation’, WFP Country Director in Libya, Rawad Halabi, said.
‘While this programme benefits children, we will also boost the local economy by procuring food from local traders and smallholders as well as create job opportunities in communities surrounding the central kitchen’.
For its part, the Ministry of Education expressed happiness over the central kitchen project, hoping to scale the project to other parts of the Maghreb country.
‘Access to basic education and nutritious food is every child’s right. The MoE [Ministry of Education] is extremely delighted with this accomplishment, and we hope to implement this project in other parts of the country so that more children have access to education and nutritious food’, a representative from the ministry, Saif Al-Nasr AbdulSalam, said.
So far, WFP has assisted more than 18,000 schoolchildren with nutritious meals in 58 public schools in four municipalities in eastern and southern Libya.
Data from WFP also shows that the Education Cannot Wait initiative – a 2021 school feeding programme in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) – was implemented for two thousand migrant children at four migrant schools in Sebha.
Photo source: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid