School meals for conflict-affected children and youth (boys and girls) in areas most affected by food insecurity and hard to reach locations in South Sudan Save the Children International (SCI) in South Sudan intends to contribute to efforts for enrollment and retention of 8603 (6,232 boys and 2371 girls) school children in Lake State by April 2020. The proposed intervention through SSHF funding aims to target Lakes state i.e. Rumbek Centre and Rumbek East. Lakes is part of former Greater Bahr el Ghazal region. It targets school going children between the ages of 3-18 who are going to school. The project theory of change is premised on the fact that if children are at-risk of dropping out of schools are identified, and supported with an enabling school environment (safe/supportive school system, an empowered local structure, addressing needs in a systematic way etc.), then at-risk school children will receive support and resources needed to access and retain them in school and prevent potential risks for drop out in Lake state. The interventions are envisaged to retain attendance rates, hopefully for girls whose attendance is low and improve learning outcomes. The provision of food in school will make it possible for poor families to send hungry children to school rather than have them look for food or work. Community engagement and awareness will enhance effective and accountable food delivery, distribution and monitoring increase awareness of good nutrition.

The project will target 8603 (6,232 boys and 2371 girls) in 14 schools through school feeding, improved WaSH facilities (rehabilitation/construction of sex-disaggregated latrines, establishment of hand-washing stations, provision of soap, HTH) and disease preventive messaging.

While at least 2.2 million children are out of school in South Sudan. There are thousands of children who may be enrolled in school, are at serious risk of being excluded from education, between 2016 and 2020 an estimated minimum of one million children will be left out of school if primary school education supply issues are not addressed (UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS-2018) i.e. teaching and learning materials. SCI will build on its vast experience in the Country  to implement integrated strategies that will focus on WASH and School feeding program for increased enrolment and retention of children in schools, through  community engagement and strengthening community structures to support education  strengthening the school feeding program to enhance enrolment and retentions, creating safe and child friendly school environment to make school interesting and fun for children through support to WASH infrastructure development including water and sanitation facilities and girls changing rooms. 

The project is filling up gaps for earlier interventions by SCI South Sudan strategy to improve access to quality education through safe and protected infrastructure and specifically access to appropriate friendly WaSH facilities and school feeding programs. In addition, the interventions on quality and inclusive education will be scaled up to specifically target school Administrators at school and community level for instance Teachers, PTA/SMCs will be trained on tailored trainings towards hygiene and disease preventive messaging to improve enrolment and retention. The proposed project will be implemented over 8 months. 

SCI will continue using its existing   robust monitoring and evaluation system that informs the progress towards outcomes and outputs. A reporting system as required by the project will be used to capture all the project data. The project will utilize a branding that promotes visibility of the partnership between the donor,