Background 

Extreme poverty persists in the Gambia, which ranks 168/187 on the UN Human Development Index (2011). 63% of Gambians live on less than $1 a day. With poverty and food security a serious problem – providing school meals is an effective intervention. For children participating it results in increased energy intake, micronutrient status, school enrolment, and attendance at school. But at present it creates dependency on a donor reliant program. Sustainable solutions are needed. 

The overall objective of the project is to alleviate poverty and sustainably improve nutrition for Gambian school students including the large number of rural and urban poor. 120,000 out of the 175,000 Gambian children in schools currently rely on the support of the United Nations World Food Program for a subsidised feeding program that provides students with at least one nutritious meal per day. This program is phasing out in steps over the coming 3 years - leaving a serious gap.

Concern Universal has been asked by the Gambian Education department and the World Food Program to help find a sustainable solution for nutritious meals for students. 

 

The specific objectives are: 

 Use participatory research to map the ‘market systems’ around school feeding programs 

 Develop school feeding ‘business plans’ that enable schools to source local produce, produce some of their own food, and better manage the contributions from parents and families 

 Assist selected schools (those with suitable land/space and motivated teachers) to produce more of their own food on site – using proven technologies promoted by Concern Universal and its partners 

 Assist selected women traders who sell snacks in schools to become more efficient at what they do and provide more nutritious snacks 

 

Achievements 

There is an interesting economy around school feeding programs. In addition to the WFP funding, families contribute an average of 2D/day to the school programs as well as spending an average of 3D/day buying snacks from the 3,000 independent women vendors who sell snacks at schools. We have identified a range of possible interventions that could strengthen this ‘school food economy’: 

 introduce fuel efficient, environmentally friendly cook-stoves (reducing costs by 66%) to improve women snack vendor profits; 

 Assist schools to develop biomass briquette enterprises for cooking and selling to vendors (an ongoing saving to school budgets of at least £180,000 per year); 

 Contracted sourcing of produce from poor local farmers, substituting 

current imported supplies with healthier local produce. 

 Use of micro garden technology to grow more food 

 

In total we have modelled these interventions have the potential to injecting £1.8million each year into the economy of the poor and sustaining a program that 30% of students rely on for daily nutrition needs. 

What next? 

Building a sustainable school-feeding program, that strengthens local food systems and injects increased income into the hands of the poor communities around schools has a huge potential impact. CU needs to do the following in order to develop a sustainable model: 

1. Research school feeding economies around a selected ten schools. Documenting where food is coming from now, where it could come from, and what the constraints and opportunities would be for sustainability 

2. Expand micro gardens to an additional five schools as a pilot. 

3. Work with test group out of the 3000 women entrepreneurs to investigate how their micro enterprises can be improved resulting in more profitability for them as well as improved nutrition and cost of snacks for st