Officials
of Universal Food Safety Association (UFSA) on Tuesday visited Kuloro Lower
Basic School which is among the first schools where the association piloted its
school feeding programme.
President
of the association, Isatou Jallow-Nget, said UFSA was established in 2013 to
promote food and nutritional safety and it was officially registered as a
nonprofit making organisation.
Madam
Jallow-Nget said the idea of forming the association was prompted by the high
prevalence of food and nutrition related diseases due to unsafe food
consumption.
She
explained that such diseases affect the physical and mental development of
children particularly children of school going age.
“This
situation serves as the benchmark for our intervention to protect the lives and
wellbeing of the future generation,” she said.
UFSA
president said their intervention includes provision of supplementary feeding
programme to schools as part of efforts to ensure physical and mental
development of children for improved health and academic performance.
“The
programme was piloted in three schools in West Coast Region and it has impacted
positively on them,” Mrs Jallow-Nget said.
“Already, many other schools are demanding for the extension of such
programme to their schools but we could not service them due to limited
resources.”
She
said the association is out to help the school children by providing them with
quality food for just D5 per plate, per children.
“This
is affordable and reasonable compared to how much vendors are selling a loaf of
bread at the schools,” president of UFSA said.
The
lady explained that any intervention that her association is to do, they first
have a consultative meeting with the Parents-Teachers Association and the
management of the school in order to get their consent and recommendation.
She
said UFSA has no financial profit in this programme “but just trying to make
sure that these children have good education and have access to quality food”.
“We
use our own money to provide rice and other ingredients to sustain this programme
for the past three years,” Madam Jallow-Nget said. “The most difficult constraint in the
sustainability of the project is funding, lack of expansion and due to lack of
mobility.”
She
said the association currently employs 10 cooks and pays them a salary of
D1,500 per cook every month.
“For
the sustainability of the project in the interest of the children, we are
appealing to the UN system, NGOs, philanthropists to come to our aid in
supporting the programme,” she appealed.
She
commended the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education giving her the
permission to go ahead with the programme in schools.
UFSA
Secretary General Lamin Fadera said the organization could not expand due to
lack of resources and mobility.
The
headmaster of Kuloro Lower Basic School, Mr Jarsey, described the complementary
feeding as a worthy cost while calling on all and sundry to support the
association.
