The Santa Luísa de Marillac School had a total of 931 children, of which 451 are girls (48%). Under the SLM School Feeding programme, 931 children of the underpriviliged Manjague community received a secured, free and hot daily meal at school while the academic year was open.
As the pandemic brought successive States of Emergency closing schools and an increase in local hunger, ALG adapted its biggest individual project. The budget for daily school meals was transferred into Covid-19 Emergency Baskets offering hygiene products and basic food staples like rice and beans. Logistics were a problem with such big beneficiary numbers given the prevention measures and social distancing imposed. Sister Amina, one of our Local Partners in Manjangue, organized the SLM Feeding distributions into stages with distanced queues, rotating groups and mandatory hand washing and use of masks to receive the Baskets.
These Baskets distributions took place in April, June, August, November and we are organinsing an extra Christmas Basket in December!
ALG sought to measure the impact of this iniciative through an indicator of improved nutrition. A group of 14 children from 7 different academic years were weighed on distributions to quantify child weight. Children in this pilot group presented a avery successful average weight increase of 2kg! Each basket has a cost of c.£6 per child and it’s a joy to see the queues of people, socially distanced, lined to get their regular support.