By Cara Myers | Executive Director
The Mozambique School Lunch Initiative (MSLI) team has successfully distributed food baskets to the 1,112 students served by our program for the last eight months in a row! This totals up to the equivalent of 727,650 meals. Each food basket contained fortified maize flour, beans, and a variety of local, seasonal vegetables, inclduing kale, beets, tomatoes, and orange sweet potatoes. These food baskets went a long way to keeping kids well fed at home during this difficult time when students couldn't rely on a school lunch due to COVID-19 related closures.
For example, for one of our students, Célia Machava, the food baskets were a major help to her family. She is 12 years old and in the 6th grade at Punguine Primary School, along with three other siblings. Her father passed away when she was young and now she lives with her mother who makes a living on subsistence agriculture and selling charcoal. Célia says that the food basket she received were very important to her family and they helped them get through the month without going hungry. If it weren’t for the food baskets though, the situation would have been very difficult because ever since the coronavirus pandemic began, her mother has no longer been able to sell charcoal, which is the basis for the family's livelihood during the lean season. Célia says that it was very reassuring to know that each month she would receive a food basket at school and it encouraged her to do the worksheets the teachers handed out for the students to do at home. She also says, “there were many other girls my age who had already become pregnant, went home or looked for domestic work in the cities, all due to the lack of basic needs, especially food. But I didn't want that for me, I wanted to continue with my studies. That is why I thank MSLI for the initiative, for the food I receive for my family.”
In addition, we purchased as much of the food locally as we could, supporting smallholder farmers. During the pandemic, with border closures and interrupted supply chains, there have been shortages of certain foods and prices have increased. This has made the local production of food more important than ever, and has also been an important source of income for the farmers we purchased from.
Mozambique has now begun a phased re-opening of schools, and we are hoping to re-start our school lunch program in the beginning of the 2021 school year. In this way we will continue supporting children's nutrition and encourage all students to get back to the classroom where they will be able to learn on a full belly!
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