Martha Solano commutes two hours every morning. Her bus travels down a winding mountain road. There’s plenty of time to think on the way to the heart of rural San Rafael in northeastern Ecuador’s Calchi department, near the Colombian border.
Solano is a teacher at Carlos Montúfar Junior High School, a school with 157 students supported by the World Food Program (WFP).
“Many of our students come to school hungry,” Solano says with obvious passion and concern. “Parents leave early for work and children often go without eating until they return late at night.”
In Ecuador, 21 percent of children aged 5 to 9 and 40 percent of children aged 10 to 14 arrive at school without having breakfast. In Karchi, chronic child malnutrition reaches 23%.
According to WFP statistics, 42% of students miss school due to illness or pain, often due to lack of access to nutritious food, but Ecuadorian households are Only 50% have access to expensive food. This is known to hinder a child’s learning and overall development as an adult.
Last year, WFP partnered with the Ecuadorian government to launch a homemade school feeding program targeting rural areas where malnutrition and poverty are high.
This program focuses on students in the early childhood and elementary school stages.
The homegrown element means rural schools can purchase fresh food from local farmers. It allows children to eat nutritious meals made from locally sourced ingredients and provides a stable source of income for farmers.
“In just two months, we’ve seen incredible changes,” Solano says of the initiative. “Children who were once regularly sick are now feeling better and doing better academically.”
This year, WFP aims to increase the number of children it feeds from 1,000 to 30,000 across Ecuador’s 17 provinces.
traditional food
Solano acknowledges that the project’s success depends on the combined efforts of local residents, including teachers, parents, caregivers, and local smallholder farmers. Many of them are the children she teaches.
“We have become a big family and we all work together for the benefit of our children,” she says.
