Attending school is a luxury for hungry children. Their time and energy are spent finding food for themselves and their families, often working from a very young age. In drought-affected areas where food is in short supply, schools are all but deserted. Those who manage to attend are often too tired and hungry to learn. In Burkina Faso, for example, enrolment increased and repetition and drop-out plummeted, when a school feeding programme was introduced.
Food aid has other uses too.
It proves effective in luring girls' into school in countries where WFP gives dry take-home rations to primary school girls. When one such project was launched in two provinces in Pakistan in 1994, enrolment tripled and attendance rose from 60 percent to 80 percent. Likewise, food aid also supports literacy, skills training programmes and early childhood schemes. The Fast track to the poor Set up in 1963 to find appropriate outlets for agricultural surpluses in the North, WFP has since then channelled food to poor countries. It provides food to victims of man-made or natural disasters and, through development projects, to poor people.