World Food Programme (WFP)

Assistance to Girls’ Primary Education (in collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF and Social Action Programme (SAP) donors)

Objectives:

• To promote primary education for girls in food-insecure areas and increase girls’ literacy rate overall;

• To increase enrolment, improve attendance and reduce the dropout rate of girls in the targeted primary schools, with a concentrated effort in areas that show enrolment and retention rates below the national average;

• To contribute to social change by encouraging girls and their parents to view school attendance as normal and acceptable, and addressing the issue of female mobility in traditional and conservative communities;

• To use food aid as an enabler to attract and retain girls in primary schools.

Activities:

• Provide a 4-litre tin of oil per month to 44,000 girls already enrolled so as to retain them in school over the 30 month period;

• Provide the same take-home ration to an additional 100,000 girls who are expected to enroll in the schools in the 1800 selected districts, over the same period of 30 months;

• UNESCO to create a checklist for ‘Minimum Requirements for Rural Primary schools in Pakistan’ in order to ensure that WFP does not attract girls to sub-standard schools – this covers items such as adequate buildings, qualified teachers, and availability of teaching materials, latrines and drinking water;

• Ensure the availability of basic infrastructure as suggested and developed by UNESCO by advocating with federal and provincial authorities;

• Use the facility of the Food for Work program (FFW) under the Creation of Assets for Rural Women (CARW), to work with partners for the provision of drinking water, latrines and boundary walls for schools lacking these facilities;

• Deliver edible oil to Karachi where provincial education departments will collect the oil and arrange its transport to project areas for delivery to beneficiaries.