By Abdou Mbye
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) through the US Government signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Tuesday, 13 December, 2022 at the Ministry’s Conference Hall in Banjul. The MoU will promote and support the Food for Education in The Gambia programme – a school feeding programme. The initiative is meant to facilitate a vibrant educational endeavour, create favorable learning conditions and quality and effective education for Gambian students.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Permanent Secretary (PS) at the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Louis Moses Mendy welcomed the magnificent gesture from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS). He noted that the Ministry places high premium on the school feeding programme; hence it supports their enrollment and retention drive, as well as promote good performance of students.
“We have been challenged in the past in terms of enrollment and retention but with the introduction of the school feeding in the system, we have realised that the number has grown very high. We have also seen beyond that there is correlation between the performance of students and the school feeding programme because students benefiting from the programme tend to perform better than those who are not benefiting”, PS Mendy observed.
The Catholic Relief Services West Africa Regional Director, Jennifer Overton, underscored CRS’s continuous contribution, commitment and support to Gambian families and communities across the country and cited the long standing relationship between the Government of The Gambia and CRS as being very smooth and cordial.
“I want to express my deep gratitude to the Ministry for their support, the CRS team in The Gambia and to the implementing partners in this project. We have been advocating for the last five years for this programme to come to The Gambia. This is quite a generous programme for the next five years and we are very excited and really thankful to the Ministry and teachers for the participation in the design of the project earlier this year”, Jennifer asserted.
She went on: “This is your programme. We are contributing to the policies and priorities of the Ministry and the government of The Gambia. We are humbled to be able to contribute to the future, as children are the future of this country. If we can help them to have better literacy and healthy nutrition, that is going to be a real asset for the country”.
Pa Gumbo Saine, the Principal Education Officer (PEO) at the School and Agriculture Food Management Unit (SAFMU) affirmed that the CRS Project will diversely complement the WFP feeding programme and would cover the areas that are not captured. “Four regions are to benefit from the project including regions three, four, five North and South, and region six”, Saine elucidated.
Mr Amulai Touray, Head of CRS Gambia Office posited that the ultimate aim of the grant is to complement government’s efforts in providing better learning environment, support the Ministry to realise its policy objectives and broaden the school feeding programme to areas that are yet to benefit.
“The five-year agreement will target 186 schools across different regions in The Gambia and the benefitting schools were identified by the MoBSE. If the project is successfully implemented, we can scale it u,p as the MoU is extendable; but the current agreement is a five-year intervention”, Touray explained.
