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Feeding the Thousands
DISCOVER HOW THE UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME IS PROVIDING ASLA’S CHILDREN WITH HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
FOR most visitors, Cambodia and Laos are best known through the world-famous sites of Angkor Wat and Luang Prabang, and the capital cities of Phnom Penh and Vientiane. Away from these areas, however, in the rural countryside, most people live close to a subsistence level and struggle to maintain even a basic living. Malnutrition is common and, in many cases, children have to drop out of school in order to assist their parents in the fields.
To help improve the situation, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which has partnered with Bangkok Airways to increase awareness of hunger in the region, runs “school feeding programmes” that reach hundreds of thousands of children in these countries. Following are the stories of three children involved in the programme. Their tales show another side to life in the two countries – a side that visitors rarely see.
STAYING AT SCHOOL
In the far north of Laos, in the mountainous province of Phongsaly, the village of Chaluangli appears untouched by time. Perched on a hilltop, Chaluangli is a collection of rough-hewn houses with thatched roofs. Here, there are no telephones, electricity or satellite dishes. The closest road is about two hours away. In this small village, a 13-year-old girl worries about her future.
“I am not sure if I will be able to keep studying,” Sang Nuan says, as she stands in the doorway of her two-room school, furnished with nothing more than a blackboard and a few wooden benches. “It depends on whether my parents let me. My sister had to leave school in second grade. My parents told her she had to take care of us and help them work in the field.”
Like many families in Chaluangli, Sang Nuan’s parents struggle to grow enough food to feed their family. “Many parents cannot afford clothes, paper or pens for their children,” says Chaluangli’s village chief. “They need the older children to stay at home and look after the younger ones or work in the field. It’s the poorest children who are not able to attend school.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Unfortunately, the situation in this small village is not uncommon – it is repeated many times over in the rural areas of Laos and its neighbour, Cambodia.
Hunger is an ever-present threat, and it hits children the hardest. When parents have to focus all their energies on finding enough food day-to-day, the kids often have to help out either at home or in the fields. As a result, school drop-out rates are on the rise. Children are denied an education, and a new generation faces the prospect of a limited future.
To fight this problem, the United Nations WFP teamed up with Bangkok Airways to help publicise the issue of hunger in the region, and runs “school feeding programmes” that reach hundreds of thousands of kids in these two countries. The concept is simple: at their school, children receive a nutritious breakfast or lunch, or a fortified mid-morning snack.
In some cases, the youngsters – especially girls – receive a ration to take home to their parents as an added incentive to send them to school. The burden of food production on the family is lessened, and parents have an additional reason to send their kids to school. The children enjoy better nutrition, and are able to focus and concentrate in class – which is almost impossible on an empty stomach.
In Sang Nuan’s case, she explains how the WFP food her parents get each month allows them to keep her in school. She says, “They don’t tell me to do my chores; they let me do my homework first, because they know we have rice and fish to eat.”
WEIGHTY MATTERS
Even with the additional food, conditions are not easy for Sang Nuan’s family. Just to get to the distribution point for the food, located at the closest access road, they must walk for two hours along a slippery mud track and wade through a waist-deep river. The return trip is then made with the food on their backs.
In 2005, these WFP feeding programmes provided food for 544,000 school children in Cambodia and almost 100,000 in Laos. Moving such quantities of food, in countries with limited road systems, to families in remote areas such as Sang Nuan’s, is a major logistical challenge – especially during the rainy season. At times, WFP has even resorted to using elephants to transport food 
into remote areas in Cambodia.
Another major challenge in Cambodia is the legacy of 25 years of war, which has left the country with some of the highest malnutrition rates in the region. Over 45% of Cambodian children under the age of five are underweight, and 15% suffer from severe malnutrition.
GRAINS OF LIFE
Ok Srey Moa is a frail-looking 14-year-old girl who lives in an extremely remote area of Kampong Cham province, northeast of Phnom Penh. Moa lives with her mother, two brothers and a younger sister in a basic thatched-roof house without running water or electricity.
Three years ago, Moa’s father died in an accident and her mother had to sell the family rice field to raise money. Since then, she says, “Things have become worse and worse.” Her brother had to drop out of school, and now does daily farm labour, earning about US$1.50 a day.
A typical day for Moa starts at 5 am. She takes a bath at an open well, gets dressed and collects her school things. By 6 am, she arrives at school, where she receives a cooked breakfast through a WFP school feeding programme.
School is over by mid-day. While many children have the luxury of playing with their friends after school, Moa gets changed as soon as she gets home, collects a bucket and proceeds to the rice flats to search for small fish to trade for rice, or to add to the family dinner.
Through the school feeding programme, Moa also receives 15kg of rice each month to take home to her mother. While the rice isn’t enough to feed her family of five, her mother feels that without it, the younger children – including Moa – would have to work full-time, just to make sure there is enough food on the table each day.
Moa, meanwhile, harbours a dream of becoming a nurse one day, “so that I can get good pay to help my mother and make sick people better.”
LESSONS IN LIFE
Back in Laos, sweet Vien Cung dreams of becoming a teacher. The nine-year-old girl attends class at a one-room village school in Bounyong village in Phongsaly. Each day, she receives a mid-morning snack as part of the school feeding programme.
The snack, enriched with essential vitamins and minerals, is prepared every morning by local women in the village, most of whom never had the chance to attend school. In addition to the fortified ingredients, the women add local foods such as pumpkin and sweet potato, and wrap it in banana leaves before cooking.
Vien Cung’s teacher, Pear Latana, thinks that the girl is the best student in her class. “She is a very fast learner,” she says proudly. “I hope she can continue with her studies.”
Pear Latana has been teaching at the small school for two years. During that time, she has seen the number of girls attending the school rise, which she believes is due to the school feeding programme, as well as the rice and canned fish that the girls take home to their parents.
For Vien Cung, however, the daily snack simply gives her energy to focus on her studies and to do her chores later in the day, which include collecting firewood, feeding chickens and gathering water from a nearby river. “Before we were given the snack at school, we had to try to forget that we were hungry,” says the girl. “Now we don’t have to forget anymore.”
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provided food to 16.6 million children in 72 countries through its school feeding programmes in 2004. In Asia, WFP plans to reach 5.3 million school children in 12 countries in 2006.
In February 2006, WFP partnered with Bangkok Airways on an essay contest for Thai students on the subject of how to fight hunger and malnutrition in the region.
For more information on the World Food Programme, including its school feeding programmes in Laos, Cambodia and other countries in the region, visit www.wfp.org.
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