Project Results
Providing meals to students in schools
Through the provision of meals at school, the project aims to increase the number of children enrolling in school and decrease the number of students dropping out of school due to hunger or to support their families. Students receive a breakfast at school each day consisting of rice, fish and beans.
- In Siem Reap 67,771 students (33,682 are girls) received school breakfast in 344 primary schools.
- In Battambang, Kompong Thom and Oddar Meanchey, there are 62,156 students (30,702 are girls) benefited from the breakfast program.
Providing students with take-home rations and providing cash scholarships to particularly vulnerable families
For vulnerable, extremely poor families it is difficult, on a daily basis, to provide food for the family. Often they are forced to take their children out of school so they can help find or grow food. To encourage parents to send their children to school students are provided with a monthly ration of 10kg of food to take home.
Students from particularly vulnerable families also receive a cash scholarship. These students are identified based on an assessment of households, and the cash scholarships lessen the strain on their household’s food supply.
- In Siem Reap, 8,927 students (3,907 girls) received 10kg of rice per month, and 1,790 students (1,090 girls) received 10kg of rice per month and $5.00USD per month cash scholarship.
- In Kampong Thom, 2,153 students (1,040 girls) received 10kg of rice per month, and 704 students (404 girls) per month and $5.00USD per month cash scholarship.
- In Battambang, 3,318 students (1,692 girls) received 10kg of rice per month.
- In Oddar Meanchey 103 students (51 girls) received 10kg of rice per month.
Total 14,501 students received 10kg rice per month
Total 2,494 students received 10kg of rice per month and $5.00USD per month cash scholarship.
Challenges
- To ensure there was enough food for each student, the amount of ration for rice at school was reduced from 0.115kg to 0.100kg per child in Q2.
- Each community has a store keeper, who manages the storage of the food at the schools. Store keepers had been changed quite often, and the new comers ‘capacity in record keeping, reporting are very limited. It consumed a lot of time to train the new store keeper to manage the storage by Project Officers as field staff.
Community participation & contribution
- School Support Committees and teachers are very active to take part in School Feeding Program. They regularly conducted meeting discuss on school issue/ development especially solving of issue food lost and damage. Pourk district in Siem Reap conducted meeting to discuss school environment improvement, student’s attendance, school development activity in this reporting period.
- Some parents provided in-kind goods /services to the schools. Items included fire wood for cooking and some construction materials for building schools’ kitchens.
Case Study: The Future Brighter for Kolab
Kolab* is a girl with disability, 14 years old, studies at grade 6, lives with her mother, older brother and sisters, Soutnikom district, Siem Reap.
Her mother, Phorn Nek, is 48 years old and was separated from her husband since Kolab was 1 year old. Her family have been certified by local authority as Poor 1 (which is the most disadvantaged).
“My family live in difficult circumstances since my parents were separated. My mum earns a small income. My study, during grade 1 to 4 was not satisfactory at all. I was absent regularly from class because I sometime sick because there was not enough food for eating at home.
“Luckily, in school year 2012-2013 and 2013-2014, I have been selected by teachers and school support committee to be a beneficiary for take home ration. My family is so happy to get food support by WFP under cooperation with Plan International and Provincial Department of Education Youth and Sport in Siem Reap province.”
“The living condition of my family is now better. My mother has grown vegetable around my house such as chili, gourd, pumpkin, eggplant, and other vegetable for selling in our village. Since I got a food scholarship, my study is getting better and better because I am never absent from school. I also got the opportunity to study English that was taught by my neighbour free of charge. I am very happy with my family, teachers, and friends that they never left me alone and I was never discriminated. In addition, I was educated to go to the health centre to check up my health and take some medication from the doctor there,” Kolab smiled.
* Kolab is not the student’s real name
Many children in Cambodia go to school hungry or do not go to school at all because they lack the energy on an empty stomach. This project aims to increase the number of children going to school and help them to concentrate in the classroom, by providing meals for the children and their families.
Project objectives
Through the provision of meals, the project aims to increase the number of children enrolling in school in Siem Reap and decrease the number of students dropping out of school due to hunger or to support their families.
Overall, the project reaches approximately 110,000 primary school students of which 50% are girls.
It consists of three parts:
1. Providing meals to students in schools
This benefits students in 250 schools and promotes regular attendance. Over 70,000 students receive breakfast at school each day, consisting of rice, fish and beans.
2. Providing students with take-home rations
Around 9,500 students from a further 150 schools are also provided with a monthly ration of 10kg of food to take home.
3. Providing cash scholarships to particularly vulnerable families
1,300 students from 47 schools receive a cash scholarship. These students are identified from particularly vulnerable families based on an assessment of households, and the cash scholarships lessen the strain on their household’s food supply.
This project is being implemented in 447 primary schools in Siem Reap in partnership with the World Food Program (WFP) and the Department of Education, Youth and Sport in Cambodia.
To support this, we are working with the Local School Feeding Committee in Siem Reap and individual School Support Committees, which oversees the maintenance of school kitchens and the cooking of school meals. We are also providing training to storekeepers, cooks and school principals at each school so they can manage food stocks and monitor the distribution of food.
Photo: Students working in the school vegetable garden in Sout Nikom
district, 30km from Siem Reap, Cambodia. They then take those learnt
skills and create home vegetable gardens to help improve their nutrition
and family food security. All the vegetables grown at school are used
as part of Plan’s School Feeding Program which provides breakfast for
all students every morning.
Outcomes/Activity Targets
Over the coming year Plan will:
- expand the school meal project to three provinces benefiting over 200,000 primary school children;
- continue to encourage promotion of girls attendance at school;
- continue to increase the number of children registering and attending school;
- work with teachers and parents committees to help maintain the school gardens and improve their knowledge on food hygiene.
Background
Many families in rural Cambodia depend on farming for their livelihoods, which is susceptible to erratic weather events such as floods and droughts. This means that when crops fail, families often do not have enough food to eat and children go to school hungry.
Sometimes, children from poor families stay home from school or are even forced to drop out altogether because they feel sick from hunger and are unable to concentrate on their schoolwork.
Another reason children drop out of school is to work in times of financial hardship to help their families earn extra money.
When children are constantly hungry, their physical development is affected and they find it hard to focus in class. If children are forced to drop out of school and work, they are being deprived of their childhood and right to an education. This makes it increasingly difficult to break the cycle of poverty.