Sylvia Awontra (10), pupil: "Rice and beans is my favourite!"
Sylvia (wearing pink dress in picture) is a pupil at Nayagenia Primary School in the Upper East, where the school feeding programme started in July 2007. “More children have come to school since then”, Sylvia tells SIGN volunteer Lonneke Smit, who visited the school in August 2007. She also told Lonneke about her favourite food: rice and beans!
Sylvia: “The portions of the meals we get in school are big enough. I finish it all! In my class we have about 36 children and we eat the meals in our class room.”

Francis Zupwah (55), farmer: "Already started planting"
Francis is a farmer in the same area as the Nayagenia Primary School in Upper East. He is not one of the smaller farmers; he has 2 acres of rice, 1 hectare of maize and 3 acres of groundnut. Francis on GSFP:
“I strongly believe in GSFP, but it has to run for a longer time for me to notice a change. So far there hasn’t been any change for me personally, but that is due to the recent start of the programme, just one month ago. I have already started planting, but I haven’t sold any food to GSFP yet. Normally I sell my produce to the nearby markets.
I have eleven people working for me on my farm. The work is tough and fertilizers are expensive. I am a member of a small  farmers cooperation called Unity Farmers, together with nine other farmers. The cooperation gave me a loan which I can use to buy tomato seeds.”

Gladys Abaa and Juliana Nabare, teachers: "Food encourages children to come to school"
Gladys is a teacher at Nayagenia Primary School and has been teaching at this school for two years now. Gladys: “I eat with the children in the classroom. The food is nutritious and good, and it encourages children to come to school. Also I notice that the attention of the pupils has improved!”
Juliana is the head teacher at Nayagenia Primary School. Juliana: “The school was selected by the assembly. They came to visit us, see the environment and check the enrolment figures. Now that we are in the programme more children are attending class. Some came from other schools, others were not attending any school before. We now have a kitchen, which was built by the community with help from the Catholic Relief Services. We have six cooks. A woman chosen by the District Assembly supplies us with ingredients for the meals, which she gets at the local market.” 

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