Children Asked To Eat Fruits For Snacks Instead Of Candies

The Nutrition Programme Officer of the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) Fred Amese has admonished school children to use their pocket money to buy fruits as snacks instead of candies and biscuits.

He made the call when interacting with pupils of Saediya English-Arabic Primary school in the East Mamprusi district of the Northern Region during a monitoring tour of Impact Evaluation schools under the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).

National and regional officials of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) and the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) were in almost all the beneficiary districts of the GSFP as part of a joint monitoring exercise scheduled for 19th to 29thMay, 2014. In all, 58 impact evaluation districts are expected to be monitored.

The team in the Northern regionis expected to visit thirteen (13) districts between 20th and 28th of May, 2014. As at 21st May, the team had visited six (6) out of the thirteen (13) beneficiary districts. The school feeding programme is a social intervention program of the government of Ghana aimed at providing one hot nutritious meal a day for school aged children. The programme aims to improve the nutritional status of school children and also increase and retain school enrolment.

The Northern team consisted of the technical advisor to GSFP Kwame Nuako, the GSFP logistics officer Alhassan Adams, a Northern regional monitor of GSFP Haruna Ibrahim and the Nutrition programme officer of PCD Fred Amese.

Kwame Nuako indicated that the monitoring exercise was very necessary in order to ensure that all the stakeholders in the school feeding chain were complying with existing procedures and regulations. In the other schools visited, most of the caterers complained about the delay in the payment of their fees.

The caterers lamented that the delay in payment coupled with rising cost of living is making things very difficult for them. Mr Nuako assured the caterers that the monies were being processed and disbursement will start in few weeks' time. He also cautioned them not to compromise on the quality and quantity of food they serve to the pupils.

Fred Amese indicated that PCD which is head-quartered in Imperial College, London is providing technical support to the government of Ghana to implement a number of interventions in the school feeding programme. The interventions he said the promotion of good health and hygiene and the promotion of healthy eating habits through behaviour change communication strategies.He indicated that the purpose of the project is to evaluate the impact on Home Grown School Feeding programmes of interventions that are targeted to increase access, retention, learning and cognition of school age children as well as improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. In this regard, the caterers, cooks, head-teachers, district nutrition officers and district desk officers have all been trained in order to successfully execute the interventions.

The team observed that most of the schools visited did not have proper kitchen facilities. Some were using uncompleted mud houses whilst others were cooking in the open. The monitoring team encouraged the head-teachers to appeal to their respective district assemblies to support them in the building of proper kitchen structures. It was also observed that some of the cooks were not following the menu whilst others had no menus to follow.