Investing in future

Access to nutritious food is the basic right of every individual, especially children. Research has shown that there is a direct correlation between a child’s access to healthy and nutritious food and his or her education and learning outcomes. Lack of nutrition leads to challenges in cognitive, physical and mental development of young children.

Deficiencies in various vitamins and minerals such as iron, thiamine, vitamin E, vitamin B, iodine, and zinc, are known to inhibit a child’s abilities to realise his or her full potential both for themselves and their communities. Investment in human capital development of children is the most effective and productive investment that the State and communities can make.

As a developing country, Pakistan, is battling with major economic disparities between different segments of our society. As a result of stark socioeconomic inequalities, children from poor income backgrounds have been suffering from malnutrition, which results in stunted growth and repressed ability to leap out of the vicious cycle of economic insufficiency.

One of our government’s key focuses has been to uplift these disadvantaged communities and invest in their children, as they are the ones who will be leading the country’s future. For this to materialise it is crucial that we build a strong and high-delivery education system with the goal of amplifying the concept of human capital investment in our children.

In order to address this issue at the Punjab School Education Department, I initiated the School Khana Program in early 2020. Under this initiative students in primary schools are being provided free mid-day meals to help meet their daily nutrition needs.

Given the scale of the issue, the limited resources we have and our government’s priority to ensure sustainability for every intervention, we had to call on the private sector to collaborate and support us – and I must say that so far we have received an overwhelming response.

The ongoing phase of the School Khana Programme is being implemented via the Lahore District Education Authority in collaboration with Allah Wallay Trust, a local charity organisation focused on providing free meals to students at the primary school level. In Lahore, we have engaged the private sector to collaborate with this charity organisation to further expand their outreach.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant closure of schools in between, the pace of this programme was impacted. Despite this, the results for the primary schools in Lahore where the School Khana Programme is underway are quite impressive as they show tremendous improvement in students’ health and learning outcomes. According to the data collected so far from just 10 schools, the revised Body Mass Index of students saw a 77 per cent healthy upturn. Even the students that are still ‘underweight’ as per standards have shown improvement from their initial measurements. With betterment in the basic health of their students these schools have also seen an average increase of 33 per cent in their attendance as well. These schools have experienced 98 per cent student retention, which has remained a problem in public schools.

Currently, free mid-day meals are being provided in 30 schools in Lahore and my goal is to expand the School Khana Programme to the rest of the province over time. Punjab has one of the largest education systems in the world, therefore, sustainable implementation of initiatives like these requires innovative approaches for resource optimisation. It is crucial that every segment of the society contributes to their full capacity. This is where public-private partnerships can play a very positive role, and I invite the private sector to come forward and through their corporate social responsibility branches contribute to the uplift of our future generations. For this specific programme you can collaborate with the Allah Wallay Trust or directly adopt schools through District Education Authorities and take care of their mid-day meal. Our success depends on uniting behind practical ideas that will not only solve our multi-pronged problems but also trailblaze us towards unprecedented progress.

The writer is the Provincial Minister of Punjab for School Education