The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ‘One Billion Meals’ programme that was initiated by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum is one of the biggest humanitarian food drives to deliver sustainable food aid that reaches 50 countries across the world.
The ‘One Billion Meals’ campaign reflects the generosity of the people of the UAE. Its mission is to tackle hunger on the global stage through its humanitarian projects in order to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 which aims to end hunger by 2030.
‘Care Lanka Initiative’ is partnering with the UAE Embassy to provide humanitarian assistance to malnourished children in Sri Lanka. Malnutrition poses a real threat to a considerable share of the child population in Sri Lanka.
According to the World Food Programme’s latest food security assessment, about three in 10 households (6.26 million people) in Sri Lanka are food insecure. Families are skipping regular meals as staple foods have become unaffordable.
Children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from, in a country that already had South Asia’s second highest rate of acute malnutrition. The education of 4.8 million children, already severely hampered by two years of interrupted learning, is at risk as school attendance continues to be jeopardized. Reports of schoolchildren fainting in school allegedly due to hunger have surfaced in some parts of the country.
In collaboration with the UAE Embassy, ‘Care Lanka Initiative’ with the relevant government agencies identified three districts, namely Colombo, Gampaha, and Kurunegala, and provided Rs. 9,000 worth of food packets to 400 schoolchildren on Friday (7).
Each food packet consists of rice, gram, cowpea, flour, sugar, tea, coconut, dhal, sprats, and garlic. Three phases of the distribution have been successfully completed on three consecutive days.
In the first phase, around 110 packets were provided to the schoolchildren at Parakrama National College in Gampaha and Darus Salam Primary National School in Thihariya.
In the second phase, around 170 packets were provided to Vidhya Wardhana Vidyalaya at Wellampitiya and St. Mathews College in Dematagoda.
In the third phase, 120 packets were distributed to the Kurunegala District Secretariat in Kurunegala.
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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