The Virtuous Circle project on nutrition, food waste, packaging, and the circular economy in South Africa has reached a key milestone in February 2017 with the first results of its feeding program becoming available. As part of this program, which will be completed by the end of March 2017, almost 1 million FUTURELIFE® Smart Food™ pouches will have been distributed to 27 primary and combined primary schools, seven pre-primary schools, and one orphanage.
The project, coordinated by DuPont in close collaboration with Futurelife, EqualTrade4, Amcor, Wildlands, RWPA, and Wastebuster, among others, uses a circular economy approach through the combination of smart food designed to meet the needs of children in isolated communities and smart packaging to keep the food fresh for as long as possible. The packaging from the food pouches is then recycled and converted into school desks. The project also entails an educational pillar, which educates children and teachers on the importance of sustainable waste management.
“The nutritious instant meals are delivered in so-called dual-compartment pouches, which contain water on the one side and a dry solution on the other. Squeezing the pouch bursts the internal seal, allowing the content to be mixed and the meal to be ready for consumption. The nutritious value of the food is maintained through the entire process. This type of meal is ideal for use in situations where the food cannot be refrigerated or where there is little time, space, or equipment to prepare nutritious meals,” explains Julika Falconer, Director of the Futurelife Foundation Trust.
To understand the impact of the feeding program on the ground and to adapt it as needed, surveys of teachers from participating schools were carried out. In addition to the practical benefits in the preparation of food for teachers, the FUTURELIFE Smart Food itself proved popular among the school children and their families. The pouches require no preparation time and do not take away any time from the academic curriculum. It has also had a demonstrable impact on attendance levels and concentration in the class room.
For the survey, 228 teachers from 18 schools provided first-hand insights into the impact of the feeding program:
- 99% said that the pouches save time compared to standard school meals
- 95% found the pouches easy to use
- 93% of teachers reported that children liked the taste of the meal
- 86% of children didn’t find it difficult to finish the entire meal
A number of key learnings from the feeding program of relevance to other schools, other countries, or other areas have also been identified. These include the benefits of easy-to-store packaging, the importance of robust collection schemes, and the potential to use the dual-compartment pouches for use in other settings, such as in humanitarian aid initiative. As an example of this, during the project, some of the pouches were provided to an NGO helping rural communities suffering from food insecurity in Malawi to shift to more efficient forms of agricultural production. It also underlines the critical need to ensure schoolchildren benefit from an early morning meal. In South Africa, this would involve the extension of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) to cover at least 50% of daily nutritional needs.
Craig Gibbs from the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), a valuable partner of the project, which gave access to its local network of the district and school officials says, “The challenge remains that the NSNP ensures only one meal a day for schoolchildren, and after a long and arduous journey to school, children need sufficient food to focus on learning. The Virtuous Circle feeding program is an important addition to the NSNP scheme, and the most significant outcome of the project is that children receive not only one meal, but two.”
Says Head-teacher Khumalo, Aldinville Primary School, Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa, “The difference that has been made by this program to our school is immense. We are teaching learners coming from poor families who come to school hungry. Learners now get to eat breakfast here. We don’t have latecomers and poor attendance issues anymore, and enrollment seems to have improved. We hope that in the future this initiative will be extended to other schools. They need this type of program to ensure their learners are able to concentrate in the classroom, because without food, they cannot concentrate.”
“Nutritious school meal programs provide a long-term investment in children’s development that can provide strong economic, social, and educational returns,” notes Arienne Mitchell, Executive Director, Global Child Nutrition Forum (GCNF). “On top of having wide-reaching effects across a child’s life, evidence shows that feeding a child at school can be an essential tool for the development and growth of communities and economies. Delivering effective education and sustainable health helps to ensure children become productive workers and citizens in democracy. When developing countries start feeding children at school, they shape the future of their own countries.”
About the Virtuous Circle project
The three pillars of the Virtuous Circle project, launched in October 2016, are:
- Feeding undernourished schoolchildren in disadvantaged areas using innovative packaging solutions (the “feeding pillar”)
- Upcycling the waste packaging into school materials (the “recycling pillar”), and
- Educating the students about the importance of sustainability and equipping local partners with the tools to maintain a true circular economy approach to nutrition (the “education pillar”)
