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Press
Release 7 March 2001
PUT GIRLS IN SCHOOL TO END GLOBAL HUNGER AND
POVERTY, SAYS WFP HEAD ROME – The head of the United Nations World Food Programme has called on the international community to help send girls in developing countries to school, citing girls’ education as one of the most effective weapons there is for ending global hunger and poverty. Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of WFP, who issued the challenge in advance on International Women’s Day tomorrow, said that closing the massive gap between boys’ and girls’ school enrolment should be the top priority for the international community in developing countries. "There is now a critical mass of experience and evidence proving the value of educating girls," said Bertini. "It is virtually impossible to overestimate the importance of giving a young girl the opportunity to spend even a few years in school before her working life begins." Bertini, who has made gender equality one of the policy cornerstones of WFP, noted that of the estimated 875 million illiterate adults in the world today, two-thirds are women. And yet, girls who go to school marry later than girls who don’t, and they have fewer and healthier children, Bertini said, citing studies showing that mothers who complete primary education will have an average of two children fewer than those women with no schooling. In his new book, The Third Freedom: Fighting Hunger in Our Time, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN agencies in Rome, George McGovern, notes that for each additional year of education girls in a community receive, the birth rate goes down by 10 percent. Moreover, mothers with some education give their children more enlightened care and have more resources to provide for them. Educated women also have a bigger income potential. "In school, young girls not only learn to read and write, they also gain an understanding of the possibilities in life that education can create," said Bertini. "I know of one little girl in Benin who was returned to school because we gave her parents cooking oil the whole family could use. Over that one year in school, she got the idea that she wanted to train to be a nurse and work in a hospital. And this was a girl who had never known anything but doing manual labour for her family. By putting girls like her in school, we are helping create their dreams and aspirations." WFP, the world’s largest food aid agency, has been promoting girls’ education through this "take-home rations" programme since 1991, when the first such project was launched in Yemen. Today, "take-home" programmes in 16 countries are giving millions of girls the chance to achieve literacy. WFP, which has been supporting school feeding programs for more than 30 years, today manages the biggest such program in the world. In 1999, WFP gave a meal or some form of food to 11.2 million schoolchildren in 52 countries – and just over five million of those, nearly 50 percent, were girls. India is one of the highest contributors to out of school and illiterate women in South Asia. Although committed to ‘The World Declaration on Education for All’, India is lagging behind in achieving this goal and has been striving to enrol and retain children especially girls in primary school. Literacy rate for girls and women are low in relation to boys and men (44 against 71 for males). Around 41 percent of girls drop out of school as compared to 35 percent boys. Illiteracy is worst among tribal women in rural areas (16 percent) and best among urban males not belonging to scheduled castes or tribes (83 percent). Under the present Country Programme, WFP supports early childhood education by offering a nutritionally balanced meal to 1 million preschool children through the Government of India's Integrated Child Development Project (ICDS). WFP invests around US $ 18 million annually for the supplementary food for ICDS beneficiaries. Besides providing nutritious food WFP supports initiatives for enriching preschool education by providing special training to the ICDS functionaries and learning materials for children attending the Anganwadi centres. Emphasis is on making learning enjoyable and creating parent awareness for building bridges between the AWCs and the home. WFP also provides infrastructural support for fostering education. More than US$ 3 million have been invested in the constructing school buildings, hostels and Anganwadi/Balwadi centres. The infrastructure thus created have encouraged pre-school, primary and middle school level education for children in remote tribal areas were such facilities are not available. In its future programme which begins from 2003, WFP will support girls' enrolment and retention in schools, by using a variety of food-based approaches. A take-home ration scheme (exclusively for girls) will enable food insecure families to send their girls to school for whom girls' labour is an essential household coping strategy. A mid-morning snack initiative will aim at providing a model for the improvement of the existing national mid-day meal programme. Combined with the provision of appropriate micronutrient fortified food (for example Indiamix) and school health activities (such as de-worming), the mid-morning snack should result in improved learning ability among children (both girls and boys). WFP would also consider providing technical support to strengthen government capacity to plan and implement school feeding activities. Food assistance will enable target girls in the age group of 6-14 to enter into the formal school system by getting them admitted into classes as per their age and aptitude. ### WFP is the United Nations’ front-line agency in the fight against global hunger. In 1999, WFP fed more than 89 million people in 82 countries including most of the world’s refugees and internally displaced people. For photos to accompany this press release, as well as further details about WFP and International Women’s Day, please visit the website www.wfp.org. |
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