Helping Hand research to improve feeding schemes in schools
Following the poor standard of government feeding schemes experienced at schools in Limpopo – to such a shocking extent that learners had to receive treatment in hospital – Solidarity Helping Hand wants to strongly encourage the Department of Basic Education to reassess the school feeding schemes countrywide.
Early next year, Helping Hand will release a research report with in-depth findings about what South African pre-schoolers eat daily, the shortcomings of the diet as well as the impact of this inadequate nutrition on a child’s development and daily performance. The well-known national research group, MarkData, in conjunction with Helping Hand, is currently doing extensive research on the quality and quantity of nutrition among needy children. Through the research report, combined with the inputs of specialists such as a dietician and a physician, Helping Hand’s 2015 Lunchbox Project will actually try to improve the nutrition that it provides to pre-schoolers.
Helping Hand annually feeds thousands of pre-schoolers across the country by means of the organisation’s national Lunchbox Project, and over the next four years, it will spend R8 million on feeding pre-schoolers. This nutritional project is already based on the recommendations of experts and as from 2015, it will be optimally adjusted as a result of the above report.
“A successful school career is crucial in the fight to eradicate poverty or to prevent it and no child can achieve academic success if he or she has to do that on an empty tummy every day,” said Dr Danie Brink, Chief Executive of Helping Hand.
“By providing needy children with insufficient or no food at all, the government does not only fool around with these children’s quality of life, but with their future as well. It is imperative that the quality of the government’s feeding schemes should urgently be investigated, adjusted and monitored. Helping Hand invites the department to discuss this with us so that the success of our school feeding scheme could also be duplicated at the schools serviced by them.”
Source: Solidarity Helping Hand