WFP warns of massive school dropout

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Thursday that a million vulnerable Kenyan children risk dropping out of school next year, due to an unprecedented funding cut in the agency's programme of providing free meals in schools. The agency said it required urgent donations amounting to a total of US $15 million over the next six weeks, in order to continue feeding schoolchildren in some of the poorest parts of the country next year. Tesema Negash, WFP's Country Director for Kenya, said that without the funding the agency would be forced to discontinue its programme in January, with devastating consequences for children in some 4,000 primary schools in the country's most food-insecure regions. He said food aid was a key incentive, without which most of these children may have no choice but to drop out of school altogether. "Some schools may simply be left without pupils and be forced to close their doors," Tesema said in a statement. "The gravity of this situation must be understood, and responded to now if we are going to safeguard this generation of children." School lunch was the only meal of the day for many children in the arid and semi-arid areas of northern, western and eastern Kenya, he stressed. WFP needed just a few US cents a day to feed a school child in Kenya. "When free meals are provided, more children come to school and stay at school. What's more, a full stomach helps a child concentrate on his or her studies," said Tesema. "Tragically, when classes restart in January, our programme may be shut down because we just won't have the funding for it – despite repeated appeals to donors." The promise of a free nutritious lunch has encouraged parents in the most vulnerable regions of Kenya, where school enrolment rates are already traditionally very low, to send more of their children to school. An end to the programme would, therefore, negatively impact on the newly-elected Kenyan government's policy of free universal primary education, WFP warned.