Nourishing Minds, Changing Futures: How School Feeding Revived Education in Guri’el

Since school feeding programme was introduced to drought affected schools in Guri’el, children’s access to education has improved in the area. Interviews made with some of the head teachers show that both children’s daily attendance and enrolment improved.

Abdi Hassan Nur, headteacher of Salman Al-Faris appreciates the humanitarian support extended to his school. He narrates how the school feeding programme helped improve school attendance and enrolment. School enrolment started falling from November and reached its worst in December 2021. Without this humanitarian intervention the situation would have been even worse.

In December 2021, the school enrolment was 161 (76 girls and 85 boys). He said the enrolment started improving as soon as the programme commenced. The programme began in January 2022 and by February 2022 the enrolment rose to 373 of whom 180 were girls.

The headteacher explained how provision of food to pupils of Salman Al-faris improved school attendance. He said all class attendance registers show reduced school absenteeism and Weekly absenteeism rate now reduced from 4% to 0.2%. According to the headteacher, provision of nutritious food also improved the wellbeing of children. He said number of school children missing lessons because of illness reduced. Interviews held with other headteachers also show similar improvement in enrolment, attendance and wellbeing of children