Lesson-148933-1

The importance of school feeding when planning the accelerated education program. As indicated several times in this report, the accelerated education program is considered the most acclaimed intervention of the project by nearly all participants who provided data for the interim evaluation. This was also reiterated in the stakeholders’ workshop, and some even went further and suggested that the success of the accelerated education program be shared with others through publication in reputable journals and other forms of documentation. Along with the success, it is important to note that the accelerated education program’s success was recorded not without challenges. One of the program's challenges was resistance from parents at the beginning, who suggested that their children stay in school for a half day only, just like other children in regular schools. The second challenge pertains to school feeding. Initially, there was no school feeding in the project’s plan. However, recognizing the fact that the program cannot proceed as planned without feeding the children, the project management, after some arrangements, started feeding the children, and the program went well. The main lesson learned from this challenge is that an accelerated education program is unlikely to be successful without school feeding, particularly in areas where child labor is prevalent. Future programming should, therefore, include a school feeding program when planning to implement an accelerated education program in similar contexts.