Listen to thisWhen I was offered a placement as Management and Audit Assistant for Zisizeni Association for Development, in KwaZulu Natal, I knew very little about the organisation but was excited to know that I would be working primarily on a pre-school feeding scheme.
The scheme had been started by Zisizeni in 1986 but had not been functioning well for some time. It needed a committed volunteer to undertake some in-depth research, the results of which would be used to begin a restructuring process to improve the scheme's efficiency and effectiveness. Since the Government of National Unity came to power in 1994, the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen. The work of Zisizeni has become increasingly vital in northern KwaZulu Natal, where the organisation operates in six project centres across Zululand, north of the Tugela river. In each of the project centres, Zisizeni has helped isolated villagers to begin and maintain projects such as block-making, sewing, and poultry-keeping, so that through their own efforts and commitment they aim to work themselves out of poverty.
Waiting list
Zisizeni is entirely funded by donations, primarily from the Helwel
Trust, based in the UK. The pre-school feeding scheme is funded by the
UK organisation Caring and Sharing, with no government contribution. It
provides two balanced and nutritious meals daily for hundreds of
children in 36 pre-schools across the project centres. There are a
further 84 pre-schools on the waiting list. The scheme aims to reduce
levels of malnutrition in Zululand's poorer and more remote areas, while
providing an incentive for the children to make an early, and extremely
valuable, start on their education.
When I arrived at Zisizeni, the feeding scheme was implemented by giving monthly cheques for between R200 and R500 to each pre-school, depending on enrolment figures. The teachers were instructed to use this to buy rice, maize meal, chicken pieces, etc., following a menu pre-set by the Zisizeni staff. On the wall of the office was a list of all pre-schools, together with the enrolment figures and the amount they would be given for food each month. It all seemed a little confused. A school with 45 children was given R450 per month, while another school with 50 children was given R200. This seemed to me, and the director agreed, to be ludicrous. Further, the cheques were collected each month from the Zisizeni offices by the six centre supervisors (field staff who are based at the project centres) and then distributed to the pre-school teachers. Despite our trust in the centre supervisors, from the time the cheques left the office there was no way of knowing how the money was used “whether it was actually spent on food for the children, or went towards other resources needed for the school, or even into somebody's pocket. It seemed that the best way I could help was to visit each of the pre-schools, to see the feeding scheme in action.
Tremendous effect
The aim was to see that the money was being used for its intended
purpose and to look at the effects the scheme was having on the health
and well-being of the village children. My research began at the
beginning of November 1998. I was accompanied by Zodwa, co-ordinator of
education and training at Zisizeni, who had been the one most closely
involved with the feeding scheme since its inception. She was also able
to act as interpreter between myself and the Zulu teachers. The contrast
and variety I saw during my research was beyond anything I could have
expected. It seems sad that the people in Britain who have been so
devotedly funding the feeding scheme since its beginning cannot see for
themselves the tremendous effect it has had, and continues to have, on
the children of Zululand.
Nsengeni pre-school, in the Dubeni region of Melmoth, was the first pre-school I visited. A free-standing, mud and wattle hut at the end of a long and winding dirt track, it is the destination of 35 children every day. The scene I was met with when I entered that morning was heart-warming: the children were sitting cross-legged on the bare, earth floor, each with a hearty bowl of porridge in their lap. In the corner was the paraffin stove on which the food had been cooked. Silence filled the room as the children ate, clearly savouring every mouthful. The pre-school was opened in 1993 in the rondavel home of Mrs Jane Ndebele, its teacher. Through her hard work and that of community members, money was raised to help the school grow and prosper and to build the small hut that the school uses today. Coming from Britain, I was rather taken aback to see such a group of happy, healthy children living and learning in surroundings of such poverty. From my interview with Jane I could see that her main priority was the health and well-being of the children. The R200 donated by Zisizeni each month was used solely to buy food for the children and was occasionally topped up by a small proportion of the monthly parental contribution of R20. Any signs of malnutrition were minimal. Jane told me that five years ago, when the school was started, the children would often fall asleep during the day and it was evident just by looking at them that they were suffering from lack of nutritious food. The feeding scheme has made an enormous difference, providing much needed nutrients and giving the children a huge incentive to come to pre-school and to begin their preparation for compulsory school.
Not enough
This first, pleasing impression of the way the feeding scheme was
working slowly diminished. Nsengeni pre-school proved to be a shining
example but as we drove further out into the bush, we visited schools
that were overcrowded, in states of disrepair, with the children
clustered inside them often looking thin and unhealthy. Zodwa and I did
checks for malnutrition and enquired whether the teachers themselves
ever did such checks. They responded by looking blankly and often
shame-facedly. Community nurses are supposed to visit quarterly, but in
reality rarely do. If any health checks are carried out, they are for
such diseases as polio and ringworm “which can be easily spotted and
the children are taken straight from the pre-school to the clinic.
The amount donated by Zisizeni for food was too little to buy enough for the large numbers of children and so, too often, the money was spent on teachers' salaries or on buying books and teaching aids. This in itself is not a bad thing, but if the children are not in a fit state to concentrate and to learn when they arrive at school on an empty stomach, then the teaching aids, etc, will be wasted.
The pre-schools that realise the need for the provision of breakfast and lunch often encounter problems with storage and security. On my visit to Zamekile pre-school in the Dondatha region “a well constructed building with two large rooms for pre-school and cr–che children “I found a food storage room with no roof. The roof had been blown off in a fierce storm some months earlier and had never been replaced. The teachers noted that this caused huge security problems. The weekly food supplies were being placed in the storeroom, only to be stolen the same evening. The pre-school had resorted to storing the food in the teacher's house, but that meant lugging it on foot the kilometre distance to the school each day.
Unfortunately, the bad roads and the vast distances between the pre-schools meant that Zodwa and I only managed to visit 19 of the 36 schools on the list. Nevertheless, the results we collected clearly showed that we needed to come up with a new method of feeding that would allow all the children of the impoverished villages to receive the food they need to assist them in their early education. After lengthy discussions with the Zisizeni director and consultations with other NGOs (Valley Trust in Botha's Hill and ACAT International in Howick) the reassessing and restructuring process began and is continuing.
"Let us help each other to help ourselves"
It is Zisizeni's job to assist and encourage community members to begin,
and to maintain, projects which will benefit their daily lives.
Zisizeni, after all, translates as 'let us help each other to help
ourselves'. Providing the money for food for the pre-school children, as
I saw during my research, did not encourage the communities to help
themselves; it promoted dependency. The pre-schools relied on the
monthly donation from Zisizeni to provide food for their children. This
was almost an act of spoon-feeding on Zisizeni's part and was, in fact,
against its constitution. A move was needed, therefore, towards
self-sufficiency. A feeding scheme that could also help and encourage
the community members to provide food for their own children was needed.
The levels of malnutrition that were evident before the feeding scheme
began in each of the six project areas have clearly been reduced.
Zisizeni, however, simply does not have the funds to continue to pay for
this food every month. Zisizeni's vision for the coming months is to
introduce vegetable gardens and poultry projects at every one of the
pre-schools. The organisation will provide a start-up donation and
arrange training in agricultural skills for the teachers and community
members who are to run the projects.
An arrangement has been made with the Owen Sithole College of Agriculture that they will send students to work voluntarily with Zisizeni on a three monthly basis. These well-trained volunteers will run workshops and visit each of the centres. Zisizeni will assist in maintaining the projects once they are up and running, provided that community members are prepared to put in their commitment in return. Each school would then have a ready supply of fresh meat, wholesome vegetables, and eggs. This method of running a feeding scheme is not without its problems. Teachers living in the highlands of Zululand, for example, expressed concern about the suitability of the land surrounding their pre-schools for the growing of crops. Mrs P S Mthetwa, of Mayflower School in the Dondotha region, said: “Because of drought the land here is too dry to grow vegetables. We have no water: the water from the borehole is too hard and the water from the river is too dirty. We once tried to grow vegetables on this land but the animals came in and ate all our crops. The wind, too, destroyed the crop. We are high here and the wind blows everything away."
In the work of development one is constantly meeting obstacles which have to be overcome before continuing on the path. But each step is progress and one must view the errors and times of frustration as a learning process. Before I leave for England to complete my degree, I hope to be able to write about the success of the moves towards self-sufficiency in the feeding of these pre-school children!
The dedication and commitment of the pre-school teachers is unending and with the help of Zisizeni, they should certainly be able to provide the children of the Zululand villages with a preschool education which is the best possible prelude to their compulsory school years. The feeding scheme has made an enormous difference, providing much needed nutrients and giving the children a huge incentive to come to pre-school and to begin their preparation for compulsory school.
Acknowledgements: CHILDRENFIRST
