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Bhutan Education |
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Bhutan Education |
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| WFP
in Bhutan |
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| Girls of Motithang High School |
Karma
Dorji was about eight years old when he was enrolled as a boarding student
in a primary school in Tsirang in 1982. He did not feel good about leaving
home.
Next
day a big truck rolled in at the school campus loaded with fat nylon sacks,
fish-smelling boxes and white five-litre Jerry cans. His senior schoolmates
unloaded the truck and carried the sacks and boxes and cans to a dank,
rat-infested storeroom adjacent to the school kitchen. |
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That
evening, Karma, for the first time, had a meal he had never tried before.
A strange sumptuous meal of pure wheat and deep-fried flat salted dry fish.
He liked the fish so much that he bribed an older friend who was in charge
of the store and took home, during his summer break, a few pieces of the
dried fish for his parents.
In
2003, WFP provided school feeding assistance to 33, 284 students
The
meals that Karma ate was part of the school feeding programme started in
several schools in the country decades ago by the world food programme
(WFP). The programme continues to this day. WFP, created by the united
nations in 1963 to provide food assistance for the needy, opened its country
office in Bhutan in 1976 on the invitation of the government. Some 27 years
down today WFP still holds strong and most educated Bhutanese have been
WFP beneficiaries at one time or the other.
Besides
feeding school children, WFP continues to support construction of roads
and suspension bridges, health, agricultural re-settlement, forestry, irrigation
and dairy development. |
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| WFP's
support increased students enrolment |
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| "WFP
has always closely worked with the government in line with its most important
priorities," said the WFP-Bhutan representative, Mr Gerald Daly. "For example,
it is at present channeling 80 percent of its resources to the education
sector in support of the goal of universal primary education for all by
2007."
In
2003, the education ministry with WFP's support, provided school feeding
assistance to 33,284 students of which 43 percent were girls. |
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| WFP's
support has increased students' enrolment, attendance rate and reduced
dropouts. It has also reduced the financial burden on parents while sending
their children to schools, and provided students with proper boarding. |
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In
2003, WFP provided 162 and 195 boys, some of whom formally lived in huts
around the school, with boarding hostels.
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| Contributed
by Gopilal Acharya, Kuensel, Bhutan's National Newspaper |
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