McGovern Dole Food for Education Program in Cameroon
Nascent Solutions was the recipient agency for the USDA 2008 McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program (FFE) for Cameroon.
We are working in partnership with Counterpart International to implement the three-year U.S. Department of Agriculture funded FFE program in Bui Division.
The goal of the project is to improve access to primary education, especially for girls, improve the health and nutrition of primary school children and children under 5.
The project benefits 22,000 children and communities in 50 poor villages in the Jakiri, Kumbo, OKU, Noni and Nkum sub-divisions of Bui division in the North West province of Cameroon
Goal
The program is contributing to the objectives set by the Government of Cameroon (GOC) to achieve the target of universal enrollment by the year 2015 by improving child nutrition, food security and caretaker practices in health and nutrition.
In February 2009, we held consultation meetings with local government and education officials as well as administrative and traditional authorities in Bui division. We organized a day-long seminar to deliberate and select the 50 neediest schools to benefit from this project.
Increased the enrollment and attendance of the girl child in target communities is achieved by providing a hot meals to elementary school children and building the capacity of the community to sustain the school feeding program
The program improves the health and nutrition of students through a de-worming all school children, developing school garden projects as well as a sanitation, health and nutrition curricula for teachers and building school sanitation facilities .
The program improves the health and nutrition of children under 5 by monitoring the growth of children under 5 in the target villages, providing take home rations to mothers of children under 5and provide nutritional training for mothers
While awaiting the arrival of the commodities for the feeding component of the program, the FFE program has already had its first harvest from the 10 pilot school gardens totaling over 1000 kg of food crops during the 2009 farming season including beans, corn and potatoes.
Parent teacher associations and community leaders are trained in several of the technical components of the project including project evaluation and growth monitoring.
The project has a local workforce of 28 staff with 27 Cameroonians and one Burkinabe. These include experts in areas such as Agriculture, Health and Nutrition, Monitoring and Evaluation, as well as young professionals with research experience.
