By Beverly Bizeki
With climate change effects ravaging almost every facet of life, school-going children in marginalized communities who depend on school feeding programmes are paying the cost as rainfall patterns shift and the harvest in dry regions keeps reducing.
Such is the case at Charingeno Primary School in Zaka Central where some pupils walk about 10kms to school on a daily basis with some of them motivated to come to school by the feeding programme where they are served a hot meal twice a week.
With parents pooling resources for the programme from their grain stocks at home to assist the school, climate change effects are being felt as harvests are reduced by the change in rainfall patterns as little rains are received.
The school deputy head Nizwani Mazhara said the school was depending on rain-fed agriculture alone as the available water at the school was not enough for irrigation.
“We have stopped irrigation projects at the school because of lack of enough water, the school shares water with the community so it is not enough to cater for all our needs and we now have to rely on the rains for agriculture,” said Mazhara.
The school has a piped water scheme that was made possible by the government in collaboration with UNICEF with funding from the UK government and Christian Care as the implementing partner in 2023.
“Whenever we harvest from our farms, we give children green mealies then use the rest of the grains to supplement our school feeding program so that they can learn well, without hunger,” said Mazhara.
The School Development Committee (SDC) Chairperson Mumbire Tombizana said the feeding programme was an important tool used to motivate learner attendance but was facing challenges as parents were getting poor harvests owing to climate challenge.
“Some of our learners come from vulnerable families where they cannot afford a meal so as a school we have realized they cannot learn well on empty stomachs, they get to class and sleep. So we arranged for every village to cook for the children every week.
“The challenge, however, is because of climate change, there are food shortages in families such that they cannot afford to spare some foodstuff to bring to the school so we agreed to feed the children twice a week,” said Tombizana.
Tombizana said the feeding programme had to be halted for a year as the school had not harvested much.
“In 2022 we were feeding children from the school’s harvest but last year we did not get much because of poor rainfalls received. So we have asked parents to support us by contributing 2kgs of cowpeas for every child to boost our supplies.
“This year we are anticipating a good harvest provided that we receive adequate rainfalls in due time. The change in weather patterns is continuously affecting our harvest, last year we got aboutone tonne. The water available at the school is not enough to irrigate crops in our fields. We are sharing water with the community so it is not enough to cater for the irrigation scheme,” said Tombizana.
SDC committee member Juliana Tafirenyika said the low rainfall patterns’ effects were being felt adversely at the school as parents do not have enough grains to spare for the school with the school having to buy some of the food stuff.
“The food is not enough because of the drought experienced lately, so parents do not have enough to give to the school, so the school has to buy at times so children do not get enough meals as when we receive adequate rainfalls.
Our plea therefore is for responsible authorities and well-wishers to assist us with more grains so that we supplement our programme,” said Tafirenyika.
