Near East Foundation

In the West Bank, young children are particularly affected by malnutrition; 25 percent are malnourished and 45 percent go to school without an adequate breakfast. NEF’s School Feeding Program (SFP) began in 2004 as a pilot with the World Food Program (WFP) to develop a community-led, highly participatory approach to school feeding in kindergartens. The key innovation was to engage community-based women’s centers in the preparation of fortified snack foods, which are then distributed to clusters of kindergartens through a local network of transporters. The cooks—mainly women from vulnerable households—are compensated in cash and in-kind (food-for-work). The approach is designed to simultaneously improve children’s nutrition, provide income for impoverished households, build community organizational capacity, and improve food security.

This complex task involved:

• Organizing the delivery and storage of WFP primary food commodities (e.g., flour, sugar, salt) with 10 women’s centers serving clusters of communities;
• Training and employing 130 members of community women’s centers to prepare and package snacks that met WFP’s nutritional standards; and
• Organizing and monitoring the delivery of prepared snacks to 204 kindergartens in 65 communities across 5 governorates (30% of the total 761 kindergartens in the West Bank).

Working with the WFP, NEF established criteria for targeting schools and women’s centers to reach the neediest people in the West Bank. School selection targeted food insecure areas; women’s centers were selected according to the geographical distribution of kindergartens as well as their capacity; and the selection of cooks targeted poor, unemployed, and women-headed households.

Initially serving 2,500 kids in 17 kindergartens in Asira Alshamalih, the program expanded over the subsequent 5 years. By 2009-2010, NEF’s SFP provided nutritionally rich mid-morning snacks (baked pastries and milk) to 17,000 kindergarten children on a daily basis (32.7 percent of the total 52,000 kindergarteners in West Bank).

The School Feeding Program grew out of an NEF focus on Palestinian children, and it is best viewed as one component of a comprehensive effort to improve preschool education in Palestine. Kindergartens are a core part of the Palestinian educational system. The Palestinian Authority manages four public kindergartens in the West Bank and licenses and supervises over 750 private kindergartens. Private kindergartens cater to all socio-economic classes; however, poorer kindergartens often do not meet international standards. They are often cramped spaces with limited school equipment and supplies, they lack play areas, and their sanitation facilities are sub-standard. Teachers often lack credentials in early childhood education.

Through SFP, NEF broadened and strengthened relationships with communities, village councils, municipal governments, and kindergartens across the West Bank, as well as the Ministry of Education. NEF’s strategy is rooted in community-driven development, a cornerstone of our work across the region; NEF engages communities around issues they prioritize and helps them develop skills and access resources to take action. In Palestine, NEF support for school renovations and school feeding catalyzed community action to improve educational conditions for children.

With support from Human Concern International, the Government of Sharjah (UAE), the Embassy of New Zealand, and the US Consulate in Jerusalem, NEF has supported community action to improve infrastructure, including classrooms, playgrounds, bathrooms and washing areas, in 38 kindergartens in Asira, Nablus, Tulkarm, Hebron and Bethlehem. Working with Al-Najah National University, NEF provided training in early childhood education and pedagogy for over 100 teachers and 40 school principals as part of a comprehensive effort to improve the quality of education in kindergartens in Nablus and other vulnerable areas. With the Danish Representative in Ramallah, NEF distributed LEGOs to 630 West Bank kindergartens, along with an awareness-raising campaign for teachers on techniques for reducing stress among children through play, stimulating creativity, and shaping future engineers.