Pupils of New Sudan Nursery and Primary School in Bor, Jonglei State, line up for mid-morning meal on October 8, 2021 | Credit | Charles Wote/Eye Radio

The school feeding program has significantly improved school attendance and performance despite effects of floods in some parts of the country, some parents and teachers say.

The World Food Program (WFP) started the current form of the School Feeding Program in the then Southern Sudan in 2003.

In November 2019, the Ministry of General Education and Instructions, together with WFP, launched the National Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) Strategy.

The strategy guides the implementation of the School Feeding Program using food locally produced across South Sudan.

The program was to benefit half a million school-going children and improve performance across the country.

32-year-old Deborah Alier is a mother of four. Ms Alier and her children live in Block V, an area situated about 3km east of Bor town, Jonglei state.

After reopening of schools this year, she enrolled her young daughters in a baby class and top class at New Sudan Nursery and Primary school in Bor.

Being a mother of four, Ms Alier says having meal at school has improved the daily attendance and performance of her daughters.

This, according to her, has also reduced the burden of providing daily lunch for her school-going children.

“It is helping me in a way that it does not give me hard time to cook at home because I know they are eating food here,” she told Eye Radio.

In 2018, the WFP said school enrollment and attendance rate were at 70 percent following the expansion of school meal program in different parts of the country.

However, the strategy launched in 2019 was to encourage home grown production and purchases of food within South Sudan.

“As of August 2021 WFP, reached 356, 834 school children in 1,037 schools across the 10 states and three administrative areas,” the UN food agency said in an emailed reply.

The ongoing sustainable phase of the school feeding program was also meant to encourage participating schools to cultivate locally and plant vegetables around their school localities.

Peter Deng Atem, the head teacher of New Sudan Nursery and Primary school in Bor, says his school is unable to grow its own food due to persistent rainfall and flooding in the state.

Deng explained that: “Even if it is small [garden], we are trying by any means to cultivate something to supplement what we receive from WFP.”

In early October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said over 630,000 people were affected by flash floods in 27 counties across South Sudan.

The agency stated that Jonglei and Unity are the most affected states accounting for more than half of its population affected by floods in the country.

Upper Nile, Western, and Northern Bahr el Ghazal became second as states badly affected by floodwater.

In Jonglei, New Sudan Nursery and Primary School in Bor was first enrolled for school feeding program in 2012.

Deng went on to say that despite the challenges posed by flooding in the state, his school has experienced an improvement in enrollment and school attendance in this term.

“The reason for the increment of the pupils within this year is because some of the schools are not being supported by WFP and it is a community-based school,” he added.

New Sudan Nursery and Primary School is among the over 200 schools and learning institutions benefiting from the school feeding program across the country.

In Jonglei, for example, pupils in about 38 schools are currently benefiting from the program after nine other learning institutions were affected by flooding.

Each day, nearly 1,800 pupils at New Sudan Nursery and Primary School get a free meal of neonatal cereal cooked with oil and salt.

John Mawien Deng, program officer of Joint Aid Management (JAM) in Bor, says the school feeding program targets all learners in the benefiting schools.

Being the implementing partner, Mawien says they are targeting over 47 schools in Jonglei.

JAM says they are working closely with school managements to ensure that the food cooked for the meet the nutritional needs of the leaners.

Recently, the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, said more than 200 schools were submerged in Jonglei as a result of persistent rainfall and devastating effect of flood in the state.

In 2020, the government and its partners rolled out a school feeding pilot projects in Eastern and Western Equatoria state to determine the sustainable and transformative approach of the plan.

“From January to June this year WFP locally procured over 19,000 metric tons of cereals valued at close to 7,000,000 US dollars to support its school feeding and other program such as General Food Distribution across South Sudan,” it added.

However, David Lowela Lodu, acting director general of Basic and Secondary Education at the Ministry of General Education and Instruction, cautioned that the school feeding will come to an end by at least 2030.

“It is not good for our country to continue getting food from World Food Program continuously like that. So, this national home-grown school feeding introduced in 2019 is for our schools to have school gardens so that in 2030, this is where it will completely be independent.”

In June 2016, the World Bank reported that there were more than 1.5 million schoolchildren fed a hot lunch of corn and legumes each day in Kenya.

It added that more than 8.8 million South African students were receiving a cooked mid-morning meal, and those in the poorest provinces were also served lunch.

The analysis suggested that most sustainable programs are those that respond to a community need.

This, according to the World Bank study, includes locally-owned and incorporate some form of parental or community involvement.

In Namibia for example, communities were to provide fuel, cooking utensils and storerooms.

While in Mali, school feeding programs put schools at the heart of local development by promoting locally-owned meal programs.

However in Ghana, the government uses a digital school meals planner to develop nutritionally balanced school meals using local ingredients.

In South Sudan, the Ministry of General Education says the 2030 target has been affected by persistent rainfall and flooding in the country.