Contributed by GCNF Delegate, Anna Tallant, Food Security & Social Safety Nets Coordination Consultant, World Food Programme, Swaziland
I began my international career in 2006 as a Volunteer Services Overseas (VSO) volunteer for the World Food Programme in Lilongwe, Malawi. After two years as a volunteer intern for the School Feeding Programme (since renamed the School Meals Programme), I was hired as a local consultant. As a Public Health Nutritionist by training, I was able to use the series of short-term consultancies that followed to get more involved with Nutrition Programming while also continuing to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Education to finalise the School Health and Nutrition Strategic Plan, among other tasks. I remained with the programme until July 2010, when I made the decision that it was time to move on and try something new. An opportunity arose with WFP in Swaziland to focus on establishing a Food and Nutrition Security Forum with the Ministry of Agriculture. I never seem to stick just to my terms of reference, and in the four months since arriving I have also been involved with proposal writing, drafting the next Development Project, developing a UN Disaster Preparedness Note, and now I am working with the Ministries of Education and Agriculture to include School Meals as a safety net programme within Swaziland’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Investment Plan.
In a way it is quite comforting being back working in the familiar territory of school meals. Not everything is as familiar here, though, as the environment is very different. Take, for example, the policy backdrop. In Malawi, a dedicated team comprised of Government, development partners and NGOs worked hard to establish the School Health and Nutrition Programme and develop the Strategy and Guidelines as key tools to improve the health and nutrition of the nation’s learners in a standardised and sustainable way. In Swaziland, however, no such strategy exists yet, although a revision of the Education Policy is currently being drafted which includes school meals within the chapter of schools as centres of care and support. In terms of leadership of school meals, though, the Ministry of Education in Swaziland has taken the implementation of this programme completely under their own wing and is providing food to nearly all Primary and Secondary schools across the country, without any assistance from partners (although in the past WFP implemented emergency school feeding during lean periods). While the Ministry of Education in Malawi provides overall leadership, they rely on partners (predominantly WFP and the NGO Mary’s Meals) to fund and implement the programme on their behalf. This comes down to the third major difference between the two countries: funding. The Government of Malawi has so far been unable to allocate a budget line for School Health and Nutrition activities and school meals, whereas in Swaziland the Ministry of Education annually provides a substantial budget to this activity.
The role of WFP in these environments is different and therefore my work has also changed quite substantially. I am no longer involved with the day-to-day running of the programme, working with partners on how best to align and integrate with other health and nutrition activities or providing technical assistance to the Government to establish their own National School Meals programme. Here in Swaziland, I am working with the Ministry of Education on integrating school meals into policy documents and on how to standardise and improve the programme while integrating it into the wider CAADP framework. Different, yet in many ways the experience in both countries has so far proven the same: Rewarding and fulfilling, yet at times rather challenging!
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