School nutrition programme improves children's concentration

In the Western Cape, the Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) has partnered with the provincial Department of Education to provide food in over 100 schools.

“We have about 114 schools in our programme where we provide breakfast and lunch,” said Charles Grey, the fundraising officer for PFSA, which provides breakfast and lunch to learners.Most children don’t get breakfast at home “and it is difficult to concentrate when you are hungry,” he said.

“It also promotes punctuality, arriving on time in school,” he said as the breakfast is provided at 7h30 and the schools starts at 8am “We train members of the community, usually unemployed parents, to prepare and serve meals at each of the schools and we provide each volunteer with a monthly stipend,” Grey said.

The menu that was designed by the nutritionist, but it has had to be changed because of severe drought in the Western Cape. While they are still serving maize meal for breakfast, they are providing sandwiches instead for lunch.

Grey mantained that the reason they changed the menu was because all the schools they provide with food, on avarage all schools together use 200 000 litres of water per month for cooking, so with the drought in Western Cape they had to change the original menu.

“Some schools are turning off water if there is no water there is no food, and we can’t have our children going hungry because there is no water,” said Grey, who added that all schools together used, on average 200 000 litres per month for cooking.

According to a report compiled by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, three out of every four children in South Africa are living in poverty, with approximately 30% of the country’s population experiencing food insecurity.

PSFA Schools Feeding Menu (original menu)

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
Maize meal	Maize Meal	Maize Meal	Maize Meal	Maize Meal
Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Rice	Samp	Rice	Rice	Samp
Pilchards in Tomato	Sugar Beans	Curry Soya Mince	Pilchards in Tomato	Savoury Soya Mince
Brown Lentils	Oil	Fresh Carrots	Fresh Cabbage	Fresh Carrots
Fresh Butternut	Salt	Salt	Salt	Salt
Salt	Fruit in Season		Fruit in Season	Oil
Breyani Mix