Dubai: A Dubai Cares programme in Ethiopia has concluded successfully, increasing student enrolment and reducing school dropout rates.
The philanthropic organisation’s Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme, launched last September, was implemented in 10 Ethiopian districts.
In the HGSF target schools, supporting a total of 58,812 children, there has been a six per cent increase in annual enrolment, an improved attendance rate of 96.4 per cent, and a reduced dropout rate of 16 per cent.
The programme is a component of Dubai Cares’ wider Enhanced School Health Initiative (ESHI) pilot programme that is being implemented by the World Food Programme, the Partnership for Child Development and SNV Netherlands, along with the Ethiopian government and the Ethiopian Public Health Research Institute.
A Dubai Cares delegation led by its CEO Tareq Al Gurg recently visited Ethiopia for the closing of the HGSF programme.
Dubai Cares, which is part of Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, has funded a three-year programme with the objective of improving the education, health, and nutrition of school-aged children across the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region.
To meet this goal, the funding was used to deliver an integrated HGSF; Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) interventions and deworming treatment in partnership with local farmers to reduce the prevalence of Neglected Tropical Diseases.
Al Gurg said: “Our visit to Ethiopia, and in particular the Wonte Boditi School, has allowed us to clearly see the success of our partners’ efforts. As the programme comes to a close, we can take many important lessons away from our activities, which will help us improve future HGSF programmes. It’s also pleasing to see that such an important part of our enhanced school health intervention pilot is meeting the targets we have set. There is much more to be done to support children in the region, but we know now that our plan is working.”
Dubai Cares has also successfully improved the programme’s cost efficiency and strengthened the government’s ability to plan and implement the HGSF programme in the future. The government has allocated a yearly budget for expanding the HGSF programme to reach more children, with an eight million Ethiopian Birr (around Dh1.35 million) budget for 2016.
The government has also applied the lessons learnt from the programme to the launch of an Emergency School Feeding Programme as a response to the drought that hit the country at the end of 2015. The government allocated 560,000,000 Ethiopian Birr (around Dh94.63 million) to benefit 2.7 million students in the country.
