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الرئيسية
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School Canteen Sucess Story |
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February - 2012
It is 10 o'clock outside in the girls school. The new school canteen has just received today's fresh meals, and are ready for the students. 5 minutes ago, the open ground around the canteen was quiet and empty, but now the voices of hungry students are filling the area. Its breakfast time in Shu´fat refugee camp.
A break from a busy classes is welcomed by most school-students, but the breakfasts here the in girls school in Shu'fat camp in East Jerusalem are special. The School is a part of a project called “Combating Food Insecurity in Impoverished Communities project”, which is implemented by the Palestinian non-governmental organization Juzoor for Health and Social Development in cooperation with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The aims of the project are to provide a healthier alternative to the snacks commonly sold in the school canteen, to increase awareness about healthy lifestyles, and also to increase recognition of the economic role of women in the targeted localities.
The design of this project has been informed by Juzoor’s extensive experience of working with women’s associations, government structures, and donor agencies on model health and development projects, including school feeding initiatives. This project is an expansion of the successful school canteen model initiative developed by Juzoor.
 Over 70% of the products sold in school cafeterias in the West Bank are of low nutritive value according to the Palestinian Authority. In many schools the canteen is a place where students can purchase cola, chips, candies and other junk food to snack on during breaks. Such insufficient food intake or poor quality food negatively affects school children’s health and school performance, leading students to underachieve, repeat grades or even impair their ability to learn, according to UNICEF. The food prepared and offered in the school canteen under the project includes homemade Palestinian breads (healthy pastries), salads, and beans like turmus, which are all healthier and fresher than the food previously served in the cafeteria.
Healthier food in school cafeterias has the potential to increase students’ performance in school and improve their eating habits
The project benefits a total of 2,650 children in 5 schools in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem area, and also provides employment opportunities for 30 vulnerable women in the surrounding communities.
There are 1,500 students in the girls school in Shu'fat and the new canteen building, which has been renovated as part of the project, is the centre of the break. The students agree that it is important to eat healthy both in the lunch break, and also for the other meals of the day, which is reflected in the colourful posters and drawings inside the school corridors. Here, motifs like the nutrition pyramid and other artwork help to reinforce the importance of food as part of studying and a healthy lifestyle.
 In the kitchen of the Women’s Centre in Shu´fat camp, 6 women are cooking and preparing a variety of dishes. The women were selected for a variety of reasons to participate in the project, but they all were previously unemployed. Now they make a decent salary working 22 days each month to prepare healthy dishes for the girls in the school.
It’s a positive mood in the kitchen, and many of the women point out how important it is for them to get out of the house and be able to make money for themselves. “If this project works out well, I would like to expand the work, to give more women the same opportunity as we got. There are many more women in this camp who have bad situations and they want to work outside of the house,” one of the women states. Although they have many different reasons for why they enjoy coming to work at the canteen, and while they note that the salary is important, they all agree that coming out of the home to work with other women stands out as a major motivating factor.
The executive manager of Shu’fat Camp Women’s Centre, Amal Hijaze, is enthusiastic about the project and sees expansion as likely, most probably to other areas in East Jerusalem. “We believe it’s going to be a sustainable project for the Women’s Centre after we finish with the help of Juzoor. We also want to rent a place in East Jerusalem and hire another 10-12 women to provide healthy snacks to children in an additional 3 to 5 schools.” The positive affect the healthy food has on the students is recognized by Hijaze who believes that food with reduced fat and sugar will help calm the students and create a better learning environment. Juzoor’s technical advisor and project manager Rihab Sandouka points out that a remarkable effort was made by Juzoor to ensure that women centres have the capacity to prepare the types of foods envisaged in the project design. Juzoor’s previous experience in implementing school feeding projects through women centres has proven the importance in training the newly employed women. Through the project the women in Shu’fat have been extensively trained in nutrition, hygiene, management, marketing and project planning skills to ensure that the food served is of high nutritional quality and that the project will remain sustainable in the long run.
Rihab also emphasizes that this project has an innovative and integrated approach to introducing quality improvements in the Palestinian education system while promoting gender equality and human rights. In dialogue with Juzoor, and using Juzoor's experience regarding nutrition and women’s empowerment, the Ministry of Education has changed its regulations regarding food sold in the cafeterias in Palestine, banning certain kinds of junk food, which makes establishing healthier alternatives in the school cafeterias easier. As a direct result of Juzoor’s efforts, the Ministry has also made new regulations regarding women’s groups who want to establish such healthy meal options in school cafeterias, making it easier for these groups to establish such initiatives. The project model has prescribed how, with some capital assistance, capacity building and direct technical assistance, quality improvements in education, nutritional conditions and economic development can be achieved. It has also demonstrated that women and women’s organizations have the potential to assume responsibility for this work. The project represents an effective model demonstrating how holistic, multi-stakeholder approach can support progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The “Combating Food Insecurity in Impoverished Communities” project is a model sustainable community development initiative that promotes the health of school children and women’s economic development. It has the potential to increase health and school performance among students, and at the same time create paid work for women with few other opportunities, increasing the recognition and economic independence of the women involved. It creates a win-win situation for both the school children and the women who prepare their food, in both the short- and long-term. Change in the way the students at Shu’fat Girls' School think about eating is already apparent; as one student says "The healthy food makes us grow well and to eat healthy is important in all the meals of the day."
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