From Hungry Classrooms to Thriving Learners: Nzongomane’s CVA Success Story

Nothando* is a 10-year-old Grade 5 learner at Nzongomane Primary School under a World Vision US-supported Area Programme (AP) in Eswatini. She has big dreams to one day become a successful businesswoman who can change her family’s life for the better. As such, she is eager to attain excellent results in Grade 7, in two years’ time, and proceed to high school. 

The school, with an enrollment of 282 (148 boys, 134 girls) is rural-based and sees a high number of vulnerable children attending the school.

“Some of these children have many needs, including not having proper uniform and often coming to school on an empty stomach,” the school’s Head Teacher, Zodwa Thwala states.

She says, of all the challenges the school faced, seeing children coming to school hungry, falling asleep and not being able to concentrate in class was one of the most critical for them as teachers. She says, even though the Ministry of Education and Training supports the school with food for their school kitchen, this often comes late or diminishes before the school calendar ends. 

“Following awareness and mobilisation support from World Vision where we were trained as teachers and the School Committee, comprising of parents, we learned of the expected education standards, as set by the Ministry of Education, which facilitated the training,” Thwala elaborates.  

This training, which was part of World Vision’s Citizen Voice and Action programme, was quite an eye opener, according to the highly passionate educator. She says, having led to the identification of gaps in their school and the development of an action plan to address those gaps, in line with existing guiding policies, the school catapulted into action. 

Priority for the school was immediately addressing the provision of nutritional support to their learners, in line with the Education Sector Policy of 2018’s objective to have universal school feeding schemes to ensure improved nutrition and learning outcomes for the learners.

According to Thwala, this meant making means to supplement the government food supply through starting agricultural initiatives to produce additional food to sustain the school feeding kitchen throughout the academic year.

“We had some land in the school and water supply, after World Vision assisted with rehabilitating our borehole; as such, it was easy to start some agricultural projects, including a maize and vegetable garden,” adds the Head Teacher.

She says the school was assisted with seedlings by World Vision, while the school also sought assistance from the Government’s Rural Development Fund in the construction of an agricultural shed, where they are currently rearing over 200 chickens, which help supplement the school meals. 

“This has helped us a great deal because even earlier this year, the food from the government arrived late, but we were able to have diverse and nutritious meals served every day at the school, except for Fridays, where we don’t cook because it’s a shorter school day,” she states.

This is reiterated by Nothando, who was seen dishing out food for the Grade 5 class during the school break at 11am. 

“I love that we have food to eat here at school because I usually come to school without eating anything from home, so I’m able to learn and concentrate in class, which I would not be able to do without the food,” the Grade 5 learner states with a happy smile. 

She says they have not had a day when the school kitchen did not cook, except for the Fridays, and believes this will help her achieve her desired academic results, which is the first step towards the future she wants for herself and her family.

CVA is a World Vision social accountability methodology that empowers communities to monitor and improve government services, such as health, education, and child protection. It strengthens dialogue between citizens and local leaders, using tools like service standards set by the government to hold officials accountable, ultimately enhancing child wellbeing. It allows self-introspection, thus the identification of existing gaps in policy implementation, helping communities develop action plans, which include their participation in raising other resources to respond to those identified standard gaps and not only waiting on the government to deliver.

* (Not her real name - pseudonym used for safeguarding purposes since the school name is mentioned.)