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Embrace nutrition education amongst schools; SIRP appeals

by Gideon Madzikatidze/Simbarashe Sithole
22 Jun 2024 at 16:42hrs | Views
The government should fully embark on implementing nutrition education amongst young learners to realise behavioural changes and sustainable development countrywide, Smallholder Irrigation Revitalisation Programme has revealed.

Speaking during Smallholder Irrigation Revitalisation Programme's lessons learnt workshop for the schools nutrition programme which is coming to an end on the 30th of June 2024, nutritionist, Fungai Kutyauripo described described the pilot survey as a successful exercise which needs full adoption and implementation by all stakeholders.

"Our major thrust is on educating learners amongst school on nutrition education which would therefore be premised on realising some positive nutritional behavioural change," Kutyauripo said.

"Results of the pilot survey has shown that the exercise is quite noble as it yields positive results and we appeal for it to be enrolled nationwide," Kutyauripo added.

"We need schools to embrace nutrition education based on the sense that if you are doing something in schools, let it be feeding schemes or gardens which complement nutrition education. That's why we are eager to catch the learners whilst young," said Kutyauripo.

"This should be rolled out to several schools countrywide to ensure its adoption and implementation will therefore ensure there is decreased school dropouts and malnutrition thereby improving education systems of our time," Kutyauripo added.

"As an organisation (SIRP), we focused on thirty schools from selected provinces which we put under the research study. Several lessons have therefore been learnt that enrollment and school attendance improves where nutrition education through feeding schemes are implemented successfully," Kutyauripo said.

There were reports that some schools especially in rural areas have experienced a spike in school dropouts resulting from hunger and starvation which therefore requires authorities to improve yields from school gardens thereby ensure all learners do not suffer from malnourishment.

Source - Byo24News