School Feeding: Humanitarian Ministry Hands Over 195,000 Utensils to Nasarawa Govt
The Ministry of Humanitarian affairs disaster management and social development has on Wednesday handed over 195,000 utensils to Nasarawa state government.
A statement signed by the Ministry’s media office and sent to newsmen said the utensils are for use by benefitting pupils of the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme.
The statement further reads:
“The benefits of this program and its impact on the lives and livelihood of individuals, groups and communities is clear, evident and undeniable. While addressing cross-cutting issues of Hunger, Malnutrition and Poverty, we have thus far recorded over 9 million pupils on the program being fed by over 100,000 cooks. Employment is also being created.
“I am pleased to inform you that we have commenced deployment of interventions within the National Home-Grown School Feeding Program that will address the identified gaps. For instance, we commenced a Nation-wide enumeration exercise across the Nation with the objective of verifying the existing data, upgrading the quality of data, and updating our records to accommodate the scaling up of the program with an additional 5 million beneficiaries as directed by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari.
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” Furthermore, we have embarked on an operational review and have been reviving support from experts and technical partners just to make sure that this program succeeds in its objectives and capitalizes on gains and benefits such as empowering women, supporting education of the girl child, creating employment opportunities, and improving inter-governmental collaboration.” Mr. Daguleng Ishaku Longyil who represented the honourable minister said.
The school feeding program provides 1 free meal to over 9 million pupils in primary schools across the Nation. In Nasarawa State, The ministry is providing funds to the State selected aggregators and 2768 vendors and to feed 194,649 pupils, in 745 Schools across the 13 LGAs. In that value chain alone hundreds of jobs are created every day and people are earning.
President Muhammadu Buhari also directed the ministry to add 5 million more pupils into the school feeding program.
It may be recalled that In 2019, when the Ministry was created, it set out to strengthen the Programme with a view to make it sustainable and institutionalized into the structure of Government’s social protection mechanism.
Immediately FMHDSD came on board, it identified the strategic areas in the program that needed to be reviewed to accommodate realities. The key areas identified then were:
• Improving Meal Quality;
• Capacity Development of all actors in the value chain;
• Development of Evidence-Based Policy Frameworks to guide Implementation;
• Build Strategic Partnerships;
• Support School Health and Nutrition;
• Data Upgrade and Management;
• Improved Monitoring & Evaluation systems.
By SALEH FARUQ GAGARAWA
