Free School Lunches Increase School Attendance

Yesterday,the UN's IRIN News and Analysis published another article of interest. The UN World Food Programme has been offering free lunch to students in the Republic of the Congo, and the article claims that the promise of lunch has kept more children coming back to school. In the 1980s, the Republic of the Congo had one of the highest primary school attendance records in Africa, but the civil war destroyed half of all schools in the Congo, as well as displacing students and teachers, between 1998 and 2003. The program began in 2002, when about 32 percent of Congolese did not have enough food, and today the program feeds up to 39,000 students every day. Free school lunches, something the United States offers to its low-income students already, could prove to be a step towards both increasing school attendance and alleviating hunger in developing countries around the world.

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