THE Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) secretariat is planning to introduce nutritional guidelines to ensure that children benefiting from the programme get the right quantities of specific nutrients that they need to support their growth.
As it stands now, menus for beneficiary schools are drawn up to include locally-produced foodstuffs considered nourishing, but there is no mechanism to direct which quantities of these foodstuffs should be served.
The new guidelines, when introduced, would therefore give direction to the grassroots implementers of the programme on how to vary the various foodstuffs to meet the nutritional needs of the beneficiary children.
The Focal Person for the GSFP at the Local Government and Rural Development Ministry, Mrs Irene Messiba disclosed this in Tamale at an orientation programme for media practitioners in the Northern Region.
“We would adopt a system that is accepted as standard so that our caterers would be able to mix the right quantities of the various food items to provide the needed calories,” she stated.
Mrs Messiba indicated that research was currently on track to enable the GSFP come out with the appropriate nutritional guidelines, adding that getting a balanced diet requires more than just eating food considered nutritious.
The orientation programme forms part of the implementation of the GSFP Social Accountability Project (SAP), which seeks to encourage accountability on the part of the programme implementers, by increasing and sustaining community and civil society’s interest, participation and ownership of the programme.
It is believed that when there is accountability, the stakeholders become alive to their responsibilities and the programme is more likely to meet its objectives, whiles eschewing all negative tendencies.
The SAP, which commenced in 2010 and is in its last year, is funded jointly by four main partners – the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Government of Ghana, SNV and SIGN, with the former contributing the largest amount.
Mrs Messiba explained that the need for a social accountability initiative arose when it was realised that the programme’s implementation was beset with numerous challenges, including low community participation, low co-ordination, inadequate monitoring and non-functioning local implementing structures.
She said since the commencement of the SAP, the GSFP had succeeded in undertaking a nationwide sensitisation exercise that had helped many people to understand the programme and feel the need to play their roles towards its success.
“We now undertake quarterly monitoring, we have developed and made available abridged versions of the Operations and Social Accountability manuals and we have put in place a management information system,” she mentioned further.
Mrs Messiba noted that although the SAP would span only two years, “we would mainstream social accountability into the GSFP as part of the redesigning of the project to guarantee its success.”
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