Comprehensive, Homegrown, Inclusive, Learning and Development - School Feeding Project (CHILD-SFP)

Save the Children 's project Comrehensive, Homegrown, Inclusive, Learning and Development -School Feeding Project (CHILD-SFP) was funded by the Global Partnership for Education. The program includes over 500 schools and more than 163 thousand students are the beneficiaries of the feeding program. 

The following are some of its achievments:

1) The CHILD-SFP project supported 223,301 children (105,114 girls or 47.1%) with school meals, against a planned target of 163,021, that is, 37% more than the initial target. The total number of schools reached with school feeding and other program interventions was 648 out of a planned target of 499, that is 30% more than the initial number of schools that were initially targeted. The overachievement is due to inclusion of internally displaced children who moved from neighboring schools affected by conflicts to the vicinity of some of the initially target schools and were mostly provided with biscuits. 2) Scholastic kits were distributed to a total of 163,021 children (68,261 girls) in the five regions to support them access education. Each kit included exercise books, pencils, and pens. 3) A total of 89 MhM rooms in 89 schools were constructed to support adolescent girls' safe space where they could rest, change menstrual pads, etc. Dignity kits were distributed to 43,539 girls, and 26,080 underwear were also provided. 4) 5,558 (33% female) teachers across all target schools have benefitted from the different capacity building programs provided by the project. Training topics included: gender sensitive pedagogy, lesson planning, classroom management, child safeguarding, education Common Approaches, inclusive education among others. 5) 312 kitchens, 79 rainwater harvesting systems and 64 latrine blocks were constructed in the target schools. 6) With technical and coordination support from Save the Children, the Ethiopian government school feeding policy and strategy document was finalized and endorsed by senior government officials. Following the endorsement, some regional governments allocated budget in the new Ethiopian year to implement school feeding in their respective regions. According to information gathered from MoE School Feeding Department, a budget equivalent to US$52.5 million was allocated in the 2021/22 academic year to benefit1.3 million children in woredas that are not covered by the CHILD SFP project interventions. However, this is only a small contribution considering the huge needs across the country. 7) Save the Children and MoE experts developed and delivered a Teachers Professional Development module aimed at improving learning and development outcomes for children. This involved two training sessions of five days for 714 (305 females) teachers with a focus on Early Learning Methodologies and another training for 768 (30% females) primary level teachers. 8) A baseline survey was conducted with a cohort of 164 teachers (50% females) to establish their initial level of competency against the competencies they will be trained on under the project. 9) Furthermore, CHILD SFP provided face-to-face training to 1043 (36% females) parents and guardians on the importance of girls’ education and on how to support their children (with a focus on girls) at home in their studies