Adamou Saida shifts nervously in her chair and points to a blue plastic container full of rice and spinach under the blackboard. The teacher gives him permission: he can get up from the desk, pick up his container and return to his classmates. Saida, nine years old, waits for the starting gun. When everyone has the plate in front of them, the teacher gives the signal. Everyone have lunch.
The 82 students, dressed in khaki uniforms and filling one of the classrooms at the Wari Gando school, in the Sinendé district, in northern Benin, devour the food without contemplation. Shouting and laughter run through the humble room, with about thirty wooden desks. For Saida, that plate of food is not only a relief for her empty stomach, it is the opportunity that her five older brothers did not have. “It makes me sad to think that they have never gone to school because they had to go help my father in the fields. Now they give me advice, they tell me to value what I have, make an effort and that way I will have a better future. I know that I have been lucky.”
But it's not just fortune; It's politics. In 2017, the government of Benin, with funding from the World Food Program and the support on the ground from local and international NGOs – including the Catalan Educo –, promoted a canteen program in schools to fight against school dropouts. , which exceeded 40%. The success has been incontestable: since then, the integrated school feeding program, which offers a free daily meal to students, has been implemented in 75% of the country's public schools – some 5,500 primary schools and more. of 1.2 million children – and has turned the African country into a model not only in Africa but worldwide.
According to official figures, school dropouts have been reduced by 4% in the country since the beginning of the project, but it is a number that does not tell the whole truth. In the most impoverished areas of the north, where farmers and nomadic tribes such as the Peul coexist, the decrease in school absenteeism is up to ten times greater. In front of a blackboard scribbled in white chalk, Djebou S. Florentin, director of the Wari Gando school, spreads enthusiasm. “We are in a poor region, with cotton cultivation and nomadism, and many parents were not very interested in education. But now everything has changed, everything! When I arrived at this school eight years ago, out of 200 students, 50 or 60 dropped out, almost a third! ”He explains. Since they opened the canteen, there has been practically no case of abandonment. Even better. “It's not just that the children don't go to the countryside, it's that now we have 286 students,” explains Djebou; If we compare it, each year 140 more students finish the course than when I arrived. And many children are the first in their families to know how to read and write, so it is important for the entire family and for the country. It's almost a miracle!
The happy bustle that emanates from all the classrooms at lunchtime originates on the other side of the patio, a dirt esplanade presided over by a flagpole with the country's flag. There is the kitchen and, behind a giant metal pot, its guardian: Gorado Lamatou. President of the students' mothers' association and cook, she is in charge of the children's daily menu. Lamatou could not study because her father married her as a child and she is clear about what the steaming pot in front of her means. “My family was poor, if there had been a cafeteria in my time, of course they would have let me go to school!” Now, her three children don't miss classes or food.
For Lamatou, the other key to the success of the implemented measure is three steps away. He points with his chin to a water pump and a garden that provides fresh food to the pantry. Both, as well as school kits, are contributed by the NGO Educo, which coordinates the operation of the school canteen at the educational center. “In addition to providing drinking water and allowing the children to wash their hands, it allows me to add legumes or make sauces so that the rice, sorghum or couscous are tastier and more nourishing. “It has been a gift.”
Educo country director Souleymane Ouedraogo celebrates the success of a project that plans to cover all national public schools by 2026. “The importance of a plate of food in schools goes beyond child feeding; Education is key to the future of Benin.”
