World Vision advocates for scaling up of school meals prog.

Amid the country’s hunger crisis, World Vision Malawi (WVM) is advocating for the scaling up of the School Meals Programme in schools to enable girls get a meal for them to concentrate in classes.

According to latest statistics, around 9 million people; nearly half of Malawi’s population, have been affected by hunger in the period from June to September 2024.

Approximately 4.2 million (20 percent of the analysed population) are expected to experience high levels of acute food insecurity- level 3 of the Integrated Food Phase Classification on the global standard for measuring food insecurity.

WVM’s Advocacy Campaigns and Safeguarding Manager Lizzie Lombe, stressed on the need for girls to be given the necessary supplies and resources amidst the El Nino and hunger crises Malawi is experiencing.

“We also need to ensure that the girls are provided with the necessary nutritious food so that they can be able to attend classes, be able to participate fully and then attain their different dreams and l think from that aspect. That’s why as World Vision, we’re advocating for the scaling up of the school meal programmes across the schools to ensure that even amidst the crisis, at least the girl and all the other children are able to get a meal at school even if it means they don’t get any other food at home.

“If schools meals are provided within the schools, then we are assured of the girl’s ability to proceed with their education but even their nutrition aspect is also tackled so they’ll be able to be as productive citizens as possible”.

Lombe underscored the need to empower girls from a tender age with the necessary information so that they can ably engage even at peer level for them to become agents of change.

She noted that although strides have been made, disasters such as Cyclone Freddy and the food crisis have taken away the gains.

“When such disasters happen, then the girls and of course the other children they continue to face various issues. For example in the different camps, they continue to be subjected to different forms of abuse which takes us back to making us lose the so many other gains that we had done around these issues of teenage pregnancies.

“Lately, there’s also an increase of the boy and girl child marriages so that’s also an aspect that probably needs to be looked into critically so that they may be need to ensure the necessary sexual reproductive services to the boys and the girls just to ensure we can tackle this issue of child marriages among the children”

The Advocacy campaigns and safeguarding Manager called for a deliberate comprehensive approach to address the challenges the girls are facing such as empowering the children themselves to enable them make informed decisions so that when the distractions come, they’ll be able to overcome.

Statistics indicate that one in 5 women are married off as young girls, while one in three girls in Malawi suffers from anemia.