WFP helps Tajikistan vulnerable families during global pandemic

The spread of coronavirus has had a major impact not only on the global economy. Closing schools around the world has endangered the health and nutrition of hundreds of millions of children. For many of them school meal was the only one for the whole day. In this situation children from vulnerable families suffer most of all, so now many states, partner and international organizations are trying to do everything possible to help these children.

Since April 27 in response to the spread of the virus in Tajikistan, all schools were closed. So even more children in the world are now left without access to education and school feeding.

WFP in Tajikistan decided to support the most vulnerable families with one-time take-home food rations so that they could continue to receive much-needed food assistance. 24 thousand families whose children attended schools participating in the UN WFP School Meals Programme received sets of fortified flour, vegetable oil and yellow peas.

In “pre-viral” times, the same set of products was used to prepare daily hot meals as part of School Meals Programme. So in 2019, more than 500 thousand primary school students of 2,000 schools located in 52 rural areas of Tajikistan received hot nutritious meals prepared with the support of WFP.

The WFP School Meals Programme in Tajikistan is implemented with technical assistance from SIFI. By providing healthy food to schoolchildren in vulnerable and underserved communities, the Programme helps to improve kids' nutrition and health.