Food for Education in Cote d’Ivoire: Complexities of Targeting Women and Girls in Vulnerable Regions

• In Event: Improving Literacy and Nutrition in West Africa with School Feeding Programs

Proposal

In Cote d’Ivoire, where 43% of people live below the poverty line and 30% of children under 5 experience stunting, the Government of Cote d’Ivoire and the World Food Program (WFP) have been implementing a school feeding program to provide daily hot meals to schools since 1989. This program targets the northern, more conflict-affected regions of the country which experience higher rates of poverty and malnutrition. To continue supporting the school feeding program, the WFP has mobilized funds from the USDA as part of the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program. Through nutrition and literacy activities, the McGovern-Dole school feeding program aims to increase student enrollment, alleviate hunger, improve literacy, and increase local capacity to support schools. The program also includes an emphasis on gender equality, which is mainstreamed throughout the activities.
The American Institutes for Research (AIR) (formerly with IMPAQ International) has evaluated the McGovern-Dole program since Phase 1 of the program (2016–2021) and presented the midline findings at CIES 2021. In this presentation, AIR will present the findings from the endline evaluation. As aligned with the CIES conference theme Improving Education for a More Equitable World and the sub-theme of social justice and inclusion, we will focus on the McGovern Dole program’s ability to increase student literacy, improve nutrition outcomes in food insecure areas of Cote d’Ivoire, increase school attendance (particularly for girls), and build local capacity to support the school feeding program.
Regarding literacy, we unfortunately found that children were reading at lower levels than at midline, perhaps due to school closures related to COVID-19 or high turnover rates of trained teachers. However, we found that 41 percent of teachers were delivering some of their reading instruction in the local language, an increase from past iterations of the evaluation. In terms of school feeding, the quality of canteen services declined, as the number of canteens serving the minimum dietary diversity standards decreased from 82.5% at midline to 66.8% at endline.
Related to gender, we see a steady increase in the girl/boy enrollment ratio over the course of the program, driven by an increase in girls’ enrollment and a decrease in boys’ enrollment. We also found that the plan to build local capacity to sustain the program through women’s agricultural groups also had some unintended consequences. Although community members were committed to supporting the school feeding program, the agricultural groups did not profit the women as intended and instead burdened them with additional costs and workload.
As we present these findings, the authors will discuss the challenges related to equity and inclusion in school feeding programs, as exemplified in the McGovern-Dole program in Cote d’Ivoire. We will particularly discuss the implications of targeting rural, impoverished regions and directing activities toward women and girls. We will also discuss some of the complexities of working in environments where numerous factors may affect project outcomes, and how practitioners can overcome obstacles so that school feeding programs can have positive, sustainable impacts for children and communities.

Authors

• Adam Taube, American Institutes for Research

• Michaela Gulemetova, AIR

• Hannah Ring, American Institutes for Research