A small contribution to the kids' Education: Consultation Paper 4

With £30.0 par month, 12 chosen children will have a school meal at lunchtime Monday to Friday during term time only.

SELECTION

The choice of these children will have to be fair in order to avoid disputes and foster a culture of collective responsibility towards the most impoverished and vulnerable members of this particular community.

So, clear criteria will have to be worked out and publicised both in the school and church. In order to achieve the desired fairness, a score system will be applied as shown in the table below: (unable to load table but text reproduced below):


Category 1: Tick one boxes ONLY.
[ ] Orphan of both parents: Score:+ 6
[ ] Orphan of Father only: Score: + 6
[ ] Orphan of Mother only: Score: + 6

Category 2: Tick one box ­ONLY
[ ] The guardian is a person in full time employment*: Score: - 6
[ ] The guardian is a person who is a traditional farmer*: Score: + 2
[ ] The guardian is a person who farms the lands he/she owns: Score: + 1

Category 3: Tick both options if APPLICACLE to children with both parents
[ ] The kid has both parents but these are extremely poor * : Score + 6
[ ] The kid has both parents but his Father practices polygamy such that the kid is seriously caught into this mess*. Score +2

Category 4: Tick all options if APPLICABLE to any (orphans and non orphans) candidate.
[ ] The kid has a physical handicap(not affecting his capacity to study): Score + 3
[ ] Kid and parents/guardians are highly committed to education: Score + 1
[ ] Parents/guardians are highly willing to participate in rice fields’ jobs: Score + 1
[ ] Others sad circumstances: Score + 2

MAXIMUM SCORE : 15
Score of child X : ?
Other notes for child X: ?

Explanationatory notes
Once a box is ticked, the corresponding score is given to the candidate. It is either the full score or nothing.

Orphanage has been given the same score although in practice huge differences exist between the situations mentioned. This is to help balance the second criteria.

If the kid has been adopted by the person in full time employment (teacher, driver, or any other job where there is money coming in monthly), the score is negatively balanced in order to give a chance to the less fortunate orphans.

A traditional farmer is defined as a person who does not own the land but has to pay a fee (lease) each season. These farmers, like any other, practice subsistence economy, whereby they put very little or nothing into the market (and they cannot manage to buy any other foodstuffs or any thing because they cannot have money). Almost, always, there is starvation in between seasons; and malnutrition is likely (not buying any thing else other than what they have harvested themselves).

Extremely poor parents are those as above, but with a shared complication of high number of children to feed, thus malnutrition, sleeping with livestocks, inability to clothe, feed and meet the kids’ most basic [primary] life needs.

Being a moslim region, some men practice polygamy and fail to look after the children born of least favoured wives. In some cases, the lives of children can severly be affected. The case worker will also wish to look into the cases of children of divorced parents (there is no such a thing like court divorce, but a man may decide to leave his wife [actually throw her out on the stree]t. Very often children follow their mothers and end up living in utter misery as she takes them with her back to her parent's house).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

First, there is a need to pick the class to start with (P1, or P2, P3, P4, P5, P6).

Second, an announcement of the project will be made in the chosen class.

Third, at a chosen date, all children will be asked to bring their parents so that they get informed about the scheme. After clear explanation of the selection criteria, parents willing to apply could either remain behind or could be asked to come back another time (allowing them to digest the information).

Fourth, then each parent and child will be received as a pair by two independent selectors who will then use the above score sheet to assign the maximum score to each child.

Fifth, children with the highest score will be selected. If they are more than 12, others will be put on the waiting list [and be given perhaps a one off payment if sufficient funds are available]. Clear counselling will be needed for the families not admitted on the scheme.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

The chosen children will have lunch made of carbohydrates (rice) and vegetables (beans) Monday to Friday each week during term times. The urgency here is to meet severe quantitative calory insufficiency before tackling qualitive calory defficiencies.

On Preparation of the meal:
The church will be requested to allow the use of their kitchen and crockery. Furthermore, the church will be encouraged to avail at least two people every day who will be in charge of cooking, serving and washing up after each meal. Firm guaranties by the church on this are needed before the commencement of the project.

Garden of legumes and vegetables:
The primary school head teacher and the minister (pastor of the church who is by definition the owner of the school), will be asked to avail a plot of land where children on the scheme can plant legumes and other vegetables capable of supplementing the meal. Firm guaranties of the land and a teacher willing to supervise and guide the chosen children on how to do gardening are required before the commencement of the project.

The rice fields option:
One way of getting more kids to enrol on the scheme is to encourage the parents of the first slot of children to work as volunteers in a plot of rice field. As mentioned in the previous consultation paper, this option is only economically viable if these parents offer to do the bulk of the work involved.

Another strategy is to request the church to organize church work parties to help out especially during the busiest times of the season, such as plantation and harvest.

The harvest (5 months after plantation) is estimated to be 490kg of rice (ready to cook) and would help enrol furhter 12 children on the scheme at each harvest (unable to load table here).

If it is estimated that a child will eat 0.3kg of rice par meal; then 490 kg would feed one child for 1,633 days (=490/0.3). This corresponds to feeding one kid one meal par day for 233 weeks (=1,633/7).

By increasing the number of children to 12, the following results are obtained:
12 children can be fed one meal for 136 days (=490/(0.3 x 12), meaning 12 children can be fed one meal a day for 19 weeks (=136/7).

NB: there is excess equivalent to 2 days each week because meals are only provided Monday to Friday (5 days a week). Such excess would be used to bridge gap between harvest (time between plantation to harvest is 20 weeks) and school meal weeks (19 weeks) obtained from the harvest (490kg of rice).

So, at each harvest, further 12 children would be enrolled on the scheme; and these would be guaranteed a meal a day for 19 weeks from the amount of rice harvested!

Since the planting season is February and July; investing the equivalent of 59,100 FRW (approximately (£60) in July (see the prevous consultation paper), would allow us to take on further 12 children right at the start of the first term (After Christmas 2007).

On Anticorruption and anti-abuse measures
First, Money will only be sent par month;

Second, the purchase of rice would made once a month, which will minimize the risks of keeping money longer than necessary (rice bought as a sac of 50kg). The purchase of other food items used as sauce will sadly have to be done daily or weakly.

Nevertheless, this involves a very little sum of money thus less likely to go missing. Mr [...] , the manager of the project on the voluntary basis, is requested to work out and send us practical arrangements on this issue.

Third, in order to make the children know the meal is their right, each child will appose a signature on a sheet of paper similar to the one shown below (unable to load the table) each time he/she finishes the meal (5 signatures par week).

Name of the child: Full name ?
Date of the meal :?
Signature :?
Checked by: Name? Signature: ?

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE SHCOOL MEAL POLICY

The first emergency plan is to introduce a variety of foodstuffs as more money becomes available. In addition to meat as a treat perhaps once a month (or much frequently as more money comes in), the fruits will be supplemented at the earliest possible opportunity.

At present, the priority is to feed children who are otherwise sleeping hungry, waking up to go to school with empty stomach etc… so that we at least alleviate the quantitative calorie insufficiency. The qualitative insufficiency will be dealt with later as more money becomes available.

POSSIBLE SETBACKS

First, if more than one children belonging to the same family study in the "chosen class", enrolling one and not the other on the scheme will pose a serious dilemma. Furthermore, enrolling more than one child from the same family may make the project cover a few families [when in fact more are needed to work in rice field- among other reasons].

Second, if the church does not avail her kitchen and crockery as well as encouraging members to volunteer cooking meal for the kids, the scheme will be seriously compromised and may have to be abandoned.

Third, if the church does not avail the plot of land for planting legumes and vegetable, the scheme might find it very difficult to buy them. Such handicap would also seriously hinder the diversification of the meal.

Fourth, if the church does not encourage work parties during the busiest times of the rice seasons, some money may have to be spent to hire more hands. The rice field option would then be in negative balance (more money invested than the value of the harvest!). So, this may put so much strain on the parents of the chosen kids and may affect their motivation. If they decided to give up halfway the season, the entire rece field project would be a disaster!

Fifth, if the parents of the children on the scheme refuse or fail to look after the rice field, the harvest might be very severely affected. So, there is a need for them to work as responsibly as possible, such that each job is done at the appropriate time (there is time for each job; doing it later adverserly affect the harvest).

Sixth, if the selection fails to be fair, disputes and possible fights may take place.
How do we ensure the chosen group of kids is not dominated by one ethnic group [this is a very serious problem]!!!!.

It is impossible to set quotas: why? Although no Ethny exist in Rwanda (consititutionally), people know who is who. Furthermore, since using the word ethny is illegal, the selection based on it would be even more illegal...!

At the same time, if the chosen kids ends being predominantly Hutus, the project will very quickly be accused of perpetuating the "ideology of genocide". If the kids end up being predominantly Tutsis, the project will further inflame the fragile cohabitation of the two ethnic groups. So, to succed, the selection has to be nothing but PERFECT!

Finally, if corruption and abuse occur into the scheme, then failure will be the only possible outcome.

The next consultation paper will deal with contigent plans to fight corruption, possibility of sending money without paying a colossal transfer fee [or avoiding this fee altogether] and the answers posed in this paper.

The meticulous plan will ensure success, and please contribute to this success by sending your remarks and scrutiny.

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