Pat Sidley
IT’S not all bleak on the school-feeding front. Western Cape experts have piloted several projects they hope will nourish children, involve communities and assist the families of schoolchildren in nutrition education.
The type of meal the province has settled for consists of a mealie-meal porridge with a sandwich and a soya- based flavoured milk, said David Sanders, professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape and chairman of the province’s school feeding scheme.
It provides 33 percent of the children’s daily energy requirements and more than 50 percent of their micronutrient needs (vitamins and minerals). And it’s hot. It’s prepared by mothers and other women attached to the schools and kept warm over night in a “wonder box”-like contraption, requiring no extra energy
There are about 1 000 primary schools in the Western
Questionnaires are being sent out to all schools so that the feeding scheme planners know who is at the school, which PTAs (Parent Teacher Associations) want to be involved in school feeding and how they would like to be involved. A database is being prepared from the information gathered.
The Western Cape’s team, says Sanders, is also trying to educate slightly older children so that they can help monitor nutrition in their families and communities. The slightly older children (in standard four and five) are being taught how to weigh children, chart their progress on graphs, and then chart the growth of their younger siblings.
Some 345 000 children are being fed in the Western Cape. Over the past 30 years, before the RDP was put in place, about 345 000 children were fed by the Peninsula School Feeding scheme and other NGOs.
Concerned by the fact that small black businesses are not represented among contractors to the scheme, National Federation of African Chambers of Commerce (Nafcoc) has sent a deputation to the province to ask for a piece of the action. Negotiations are now