NEWSLETTERspring 2013

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CONTENT

p1 Lead photo

p1 Word from the President

p2 Brief

p3-4 Nutrition and education

p5 Interview

p6 Project Bank

p7 Your commitmentRaising voices for education in Africa

EDUCATION & NUTRITION a recipe for quality development

A nursery created by the Environmental Club of the Mutambu secondary school – Bujumbura province, Burundi

Jean-Jacques SchulFounding member & Chairman of IDAY-International

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IDAY-International aisbl - 19, rue des Jambes - 1420 Braine-l’Alleud - Belgium Responsible publisher: J-J. Schul - Redactor in chief/graphist: D. DevillersContact: T. +32 (0)2 385 44 13 - F. +32 (0)2 385 44 12 - info@iday.org Bank account: IBAN - BE 93 5230 8026 6767 - SWIFT - TRIOBEBB (TRIODOS)

Lead Photo

Africa suffers from malnutrition. Quality education is impossible as long as this plague is not eradicated.

The IDAY network holds a privileged position within African civil society to contribute to solving this problem. Building on its relation with youth clubs and on synergies between grassroots initiatives, it is able to foster integrated projects such as school gardens, energy-saving stoves for school canteens or rainwater harvesting and purification in schools that help improve nutrition and the learning environment as a whole.

This strengthens the school as a place of community interest where young people learn how to improve the quality of education, protect their environment, and where they grow a sense of ownership and responsibility for the development of their country.

The FAO, PA-International, the World Bank and international private funds seem to progressively understand the role that IDAY can play in taking up this challenge.

With such success stories, the network hopes that the African governments will make their own the efforts of their citizens.

Brief.

Shared goals, same country = one coalitionIn response to an increasing membership across the country, IDAY-Zanzibar has become IDAY-Tanzania.

The members are structuring their collaboration in order to advocate together. Unity will make them stronger. tanzania@iday.org.

GPSA ... what's that?IDAY International is now a partner of the GPSA1, a multi-stakeholders scheme initiated by the World Bank with the view to strengthen the participation of local civil society and its collaboration with the governments. Technical and financial support may only be made available to civil society organisations once the national authorities opt-in the Partnership. The IDAY coalitions are working on it. 1 Global Partnership for Social Accountability

UNITY

PARTNERSHIP

Starring Artemisia annua on the IDAY television!Thanks to the video produced by Camille Heylen and Félicien Meunier, two agronomist engineers who studied the Artemisia annua plant cultivation with IDAY-Togo, you can also grow it yourself easily at a minimal cost. With this, you will be able to protect yourself from mosquitoes and malaria! http://www.youtube.com/user/iday1606

MALARIA

A week in jail for excessive noise?IDAY-Burundi’s chairman, Mrs Goreth Kanyange, was jailed shortly after expressing her views on the BBC about the situation of domestic workers in Burundi. The reason cited was an excess of noise at the restaurant operated by Mrs Kanyange's CAD, a training center for domestic workers. An arrest that rings of political pressure...

100 more!100 Guineans have been able to enroll at the Maa Tokpa Houwa School after the school management agreed to reducing the tuition fees for destitute children. Many thanks to IDAY- Guinea for its advocacy campaign ‘Education, a shared responsibility'.

HUMAN RIGHTS

EDUCATION FOR ALL

Want to follow IDAY-International news?Join our IDAY Facebook page!

2More info? info@iday.org

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 2012 report on food security1, hunger is regressing in the world except for Sub-Saharian Africa, where the situation is worrisome: one fourth of the population suffers from malnutrition, and this number keeps increasing. This plague has a negative impact on education and therefore on the developent of the continent.

The agriculture sector in Africa is under mounting pressure from the strong demographic growth. Yet, productivity improvements are insufficient to meet the growing needs, partially due to a slow modernisation of the production techniques.

Climate change also weighs heavily on agriculture and food security on the continent, causing the already challenging farming conditions in some regions to degrade further.

Conflicts and political instability only make the situation worse by disturbing farming activities and investments.

Innovating and ambitious agricultural policies are wanted in several African States, and only

recently have donors refocused their priorities on encouraging policies and programmes aimed at sustainably eradicating malnutrition on a large scale.

For a long time, industrialisation has been the priority at the expense of agriculture, despite the food challenges and the socio-economic importance of the rural sector in many countries.

The impact on education is just as severe.

Hunger and malnutrition decrease the academic performances of the children.

Low birth weigh, protein-energy malnutrition, anaemia and iodine deficiency alter the cognitive capacities, making learning more difficult even for assiduous pupils. Even a moderately stunted physical growth is demonstrated to hamper the mental capacities and thus the academic results1. A nutritious diet is therefore key to a full physical and cognitive development.

Malnutrition also results from a lack of knowledge of healthy eating habits and of ways to improve the food intake for children.

˝With more than one in four of its 856 million people undernourished, Sub-Saharan Africa

remains the world’s most food-insecure region. United Nations Organisation

1 The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 20122 Study on the desinfection of well water with Artemisia annua in

the Centrafrican Republic, Lavoisier Laboratory, Bangui, 2011.3 Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food

Summit Action Plan, FAO, 1996EDUCATION

+ malnutrition = zero!

Food security has been defined as existing when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.3

GLOSSARY

4More info? info@iday.org

Hence, education and nutrition are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

The quality of these two pilars of a child's development can greatly accelerate this development.

IDAY's school gardensThe IDAY network promotes school gardens to address the issue of malnutrition as a source of learning difficulties.

Nutritious vegetable and fruit with high vitamin and protein content are grown to boost the cognitive capacities of the children. These gardens also include medicinal crops such as Artemisia annua for its antimalarial and - in combination with moringa - water purification properties2.

IDAY-Uganda has indeed championed for several years that access to drinking water in schools is just as important as a healthy food intake. Not only is it essential to combat waterborne diseases, but it also prevents children from spending school time fetching water, and brings about a

general improvement of the learning conditions.

IDAY's understanding of a school garden goes beyond food production. It is also a learning space. The growing techniques are adapted to the local context and resources so that the pupils, the teachers and the parents can duplicate them easily while conservating, protecting and multiplicating their natural capital. Children thus learn how to grow local and seasonal products, some of which have been long forgotten, and to develop healthy food habits.

Schools are traditionally efficient vehicules for knowledge transfer to and from the community.

The exchange of know-how and experiences gained from both the school gardens and traditional agricultural methods strengthens the collective knowledge about food security.

The school garden also serves to build up a sense of solidarity among communities. In each garden, a plot is set aside for the production of seeds and seedlings that are given to other schools so that they can start

cultivating their own.

This is a sustainable and economically viable strategy. The food and health habits as well as the agricultural skills learned at school will be passed on through generations.

The IDAY network's approach in Africa receives a growing attention among other development stakeholders such as the FAO, a steady and fervent promoter of school gardens.

The initiative was launched in a few countries. Should the current pace be sustained, it could reach within 5 years some 4 000 schools in 12 countries, e.g. 1 300 000 pupils, 15 000 teachers and their families.

Based on the benefits recorded on both education and nutrition, the IDAY coalitions is now advocating for the education, agriculture and health authorities to integrate this programme in their national policies.

School gardens can be a powerful tool to improve the quality of nutrition and education of children and their families in rural and urban areas in developing countries, if they are integrated with national agricultural, nutrition and education programmes. FAO, School gardens: education and nutrition go together, 2005

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The PA International Foundation's mission is to assist governments, international or national institutions and enterprises in identifying and developing new approaches to trans-boundary and trans-cultural problems, in Europe and worldwide. Particular attention is paid to the introduction and early use of CO2 emission reduction technologies.

Interview.As most of the attention tends to be focused on famine situations, the issue of chronical malnutrition often remains under the radar. Mark Eyskens, Belgian State Minister and President of Public Advice International (PA International) talks about the evolution of international aid in this sector and the actions required to fight food insecurity.

Can the international community help combat malnutrition?

The estimated cost for eradicating this plague amounts to hundreds of thousands of Euros. The European institutions and other multilateral bodies, starting with the United Nations, need to share the effort.

A joint plan must urgently be developped with all parties involved, e.g. the European institutions, the private sector, non governmental organisations, the scientific community, etc.

The European Commission Director General in charge of humanitarian affairs recently heralded the publication of an important statement on the issue of malnutrition.

Considering the complexity and diversity of the issues at stake, a public-private partnership should be envisaged.

Do you think it is relevant to link together nutrition and education for all, for instance with school gardens?

Malnutrition usually has desastrous effects on the development and well-being of young people. It increases their chance of being dependent on their family and the society for the rest of their life.

The negative impact of malnutrition on the development of cognitive capacities is scientifically proven.

It is paramount not only to improve the quality of nutrition for children, but also to educate them and their parents

to adopt nutrition habits allowing for a full development of the individual. IDAY's initiatives are innovating and they open very promising prospects.

Are the challenges facing development aid different from what they were at the end of your term as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium in 1992?

Development aid has changed a lot since I left public office.

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been able to engage in wider and more diversified interventions. The United Nations could to extend their action. So did the European Union, the world's largest donor of development aid.

But new challenges also surfaced. In many developing countries, poor governance, lack of efficacity, corruption and conflicts impede on development policies and sometimes render them impossible.

IDAY's initiatives are innovative and they open very promising prospects. Our foundation extends its congratulations and encouragements to the network.Mark Eyskens, Belgian State Minister

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Project Bank.The IDAY Project Bank is a pool of low cost and quality initiatives from African civil society to foster education for all in Africa. It shows to the governments that the right to quality education for all is achievable and essential to their countries' development. The projects may be funded in phases. All donations, even small ones, are useful.

Support our projects! Check www.iday.org or contact us directly at info@iday.org!

Project 19Country

KENYA

Cost

12 060 €

Number of children

1800

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Fired-up about education!Many African schools make use of open fires to prepare meals. They generate a lot of smoke, consume great amounts of fuel, require a lot of manpower and sometimes cause fires.

Two years ago, the organisation DARAJA CIF, a member of IDAY-Kenya, thought about installing energy-saving stoves in schools. Using heat-efficient material, they are tailored to fit tightly

with the pots, thus

minimising heat loss, smoke and risks of fire. This also entails a reduced cooking time, hence less fuel.

In the informal settlement of Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya), the Saint-Christine School and its 400 pupils were the first to benefit from the project in 2009.

Since then, the school's weekly wood expenditures have dropped from 11€ to 4,40€.

This allowed for a reduction in the canteen fees and the reallocation of some financial resources to genuine

education expenses. As a result, enrollment increased while hunger-related truancy declined. The quality of learning as a whole improved.

Following this success, 2 more stoves have been installed and 9 schools are awaiting funding to be equipped with a similar technology. If the benefits are confirmed, IDAY-Kenya will call on the authorities to scale up this measure to all schools in Kenya.

In addition, some countries are confronted with population explosion. Urbanisation results in human concentrations by the million or dozens of millions, which makes the living conditions even worse for many inhabitants.

Some countries have managed to emerge economically, yet the general living standards of their population have remained low. Absolute poverty keeps increasing every year.

In your opinion, do NGOs still have a role to play?

The non governmental organisations still have a key role to play by fostering awareness among polical and economic decision-makers.

The success of some of their projects has a great impact as it proves that solutions are possible. They can serve as a basis for other initiatives developed in synergy on a larger scale.

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