Averting The Pangs of Child Hunger

Mazuba Mwiinga

We all may have our own thoughts on so many things in this first half of the year. In Eastern Province of Zambia, one thing is not debatable. The year so far has been busy. The cholera outbreak that belaboured our efforts was mopped. Commodity prices remain fluctuating, as traders cash in, while several customers cash out from hand to mouth. But one thing hasn’t changed – the drought: with it, the pangs of hunger.

With the economy’s growth slimming with the escalating dry spell, growing at 2.7%, the lowest in five years according to the Bank of Zambia, it was inevitable to declare the situation a ‘national disaster.’

With its high poverty levels, at 70%, the province’s food insecurity has been a major challenge affecting the cardinal parts of people’s livelihoods. This further underlines a more worrying state of the matter, as recent assessment predicts an escalation of food shortages as the year progresses.

Though no clear data is currently available on food insecurity’s catalyst on teen pregnancies, one would still be worried with the effects of poverty exuberated by droughts that has rendered school going girls vulnerable to pregnancies and early marriages. You and I would surely agree that such incidences are a result of early sexual debut, that doesn’t just result in teen girls dropping out of school but exposes them to health hazards too. Finding themselves in serious dilemmas, the girls end up falling for acts that are detrimental to their health, and better futures, just in the hope of stepping over the pangs of poverty.

The Marys Meals school feeding programme has however influenced some of these teen mothers back to school where they are able to have a meal that gives them hope of a better future; realising that a second chance, is always never too late for their ages. These meals don’t only re-energise their cognitive abilities, but also nourishes their lives. Closing gaps of inequalities, the meals are offered equally to learners regardless of their health and social status, gender, creed, race or tribe they are identified by. They equalize each one of their potentials to be who they wish to be through pursuing educational opportunities on a full stomach.

With over 400,000 learners in the programme, in 742 Schools of the 11 Districts of the Province, one wouldn’t doubt that the more than 100,000 learners recently added to the programme, are from households that are either struggling with malnutrition or out rightly hit with food insecurity, considering the overwhelming figures of rural households that lost their crop to erratic rains the previous season.

The meals may not sustainably address the learners’ families' access to livelihoods but have consistently continued contributing to their healthy lives that have kept them in schools. They have further reduced the household burden of making sure the learners are fed before going to school, thereby using the resources they would have spent on them, to cover gaps in their income generating activities that keep sustaining their household needs.

Meeting the overwhelming need of the child, previously outside the programme, can therefore never be celebrated in silence, in this 10th year of feeding in the country. The expansion has come at the right time, for the child that has been waiting for it deservingly.