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Nancy Walters, the chief of school feeding policy at WFP, told a New York forum on hunger that the programmes have many benefits beyond the immediate goal of ensuring children do not go hungry. They help children stay in class, reduce levels of diseases and other health problems, empower girls, lift education standards and free many youngsters from having to work.

Some 66 million schoolchildren in dozens of countries currently receive meals through the programmes, and Ms. Walters said WFP would continue to fund and implement them with the help of its current partners.

"We have seen the impact of fortified biscuits on anaemia levels in Bangladesh, for example. We know about the impacts in terms of gender, social protection, stability, income transfer, freed parental labour, combating child labour impacts and how school feeding can be a platform to local production, nutrition, hygiene and HIV information." She also emphasized their value to efforts to reach the social and economic targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a target date of 2015.

Bujumbura — Burundi is set to benefit from a rice fortification technology that will not only be the first in Africa but will also help check malnutrition in children through school-feeding programmes. International organizations PATH and World Vision will introduce Ultra Rice, made from rice flour and enriched with micronutrients, including iron, zinc and folic acid, to about 15,000 children from April.

According to Neilson, the project will impact "on the attendance and retention of primary-school students. In addition, the students continue to receive nutrition education through the government health and education programmes." Rice is not a staple food in Burundi, however. A parent in the capital, Bujumbura, who declined to be named, said: "In our home villages, we eat rice only on special occasions, like Christmas or during other ceremonies. This will be interesting for children to get it at school on a daily basis; we hope its taste won't be too different from the normal rice."

Educational inclusion relates to all children accessing and meaningfully participating in quality education, in ways that are responsive to their individual needs. The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘inclusive education’ are often used in relation to children with disabilities and/or special needs and emerged partly out of debates to reduce their segregation from mainstream schooling.In recent years, these terms have been used by the Education for All (EFA) movement in relation to all children who are marginalised and excluded from basic education, not just in terms of initial access to schooling, but access to rights within schooling processes. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identifies inclusion as “…a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education.”

According to UNESCO, inclusion “…involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.”  

"Why are you going to school? Education is useless for a girl." Forty-five-year old Bibi Gul wasn't happy that her young daughter, Nisa, had chosen to attend school. It meant the 9-year-old was busy most of the time doing her homework.

Even when public schools are available, parents often don't want their daughters to walk long distances unaccompanied to reach them. By bringing schools close to home—and, in certain communities, creating classes specifically for girls—CRS ensured that thousands of girls would be able to learn.

Nisa was especially happy when a tin box of storybooks arrived. CRS provides the schools we support with "libraries in a box" so that students can take home books to read. "After this, every day I would bring a storybook and I would read it for my sisters and brothers," remembers Nisa. But her mother still wasn't happy about her studies.

“I want to have my school back, but one that is safer and won’t collapse if there is another earthquake,” she says. “Too many children died, and children are not supposed to die.”

Ideas for improving securityYouth facilitator Emmanuela, 21, is from Jacmel, one of the cities worst affected by the earthquake. She explains how the children’s drawing are being used as a tool for developing proposals. Some of the children suggest projects to clean up the trash in camps for the displaced, while others want to band together to improve security where lighting isn’t adequate for girls to feel safe at night.Josette, 14, suggests that giving children flashlights is a good way to protect them from gender-based violence.

“The entire reconstruction of Haiti is not something that is possible in just a few months or a few years,” says Widmark, 17, from Cap Haitien. “The reconstruction will happen in the future, but the children need to be educated first.”

While life for many women in the country remains difficult, today Herat’s Gowarshad High School – named for the powerful Timurid queen who founded the city – is full of confident young girls who are well aware of their rights.

“If a woman is educated, she can effectively participate in society and transfer her knowledge to her children,” said Fariba, the school’s volleyball captain. “A society must not be led by men only.”

the Bangladeshi non-governmental organization BRAC runs a community-based school where girls who have not been able to enter the formal education system can get a basic education. There girls are tutored for two years, at which point they are prepared to join the formal school system at the fourth-grade level.

Ms. Fanilievna added that Kyrgyzstan’s schools are planning to include peace and tolerance education in response to the recent strife. The first month of school will be dedicated to Peace and Reconciliation, and UNICEF has cooperated with The Ministry of Education to finalize the peace-building lessons which will be integrated in the regular curriculum.

As the head teacher speaks, several female principals from other Osh schools come to the distribution point at Lomonosov to pick up their School-in-a-Box kits – bundles of basic education supplies designed for up to 80 students in an emergency setting – which were delivered by UNICEF to some 277 schools in Osh and Jalal Abad provinces.

“All the rest of my life depends on my education, and you find your best friends at school,” she said. “Schools also have a great peace-building potential as they are uniting students from different backgrounds.“For instance, at Lomonosov School we have 14 ethnicities,” Nazbiyke added. “We communicate and stay friends. Our hope is that this, in turn, will influence our parents and the community.”Nazbiyke knows that her parents are aware of the major role schools play in bringing peace back to the communities. The vital effect of school starting, of teachers and students coming together, resounds through Osh. It is bringing a sense of normalcy to a province that desperately needs it.

Water has been identified as a top priority for aid to Haiti as it struggles to recover. The consequences of not having access to water extend beyond dehydration. Thirst drives people to water sources they would not have considered before - sources contaminated with human waste, garbage, and industrial byproducts. Using this water leads to diseases like cholera and dysentery, which spread rapidly through communities. Aid efforts must place a priority on bringing safe water to Haiti as soon as possible if the country is to quickly move beyond the immediate crisis to long-term recovery efforts.

Providing water to Haiti has been troublesome for decades. According to the World Health Organization, only 58% of Haitians had sustainable access to clean water in 2006.

Steve Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization, suggests in a New York Times editorial that Haiti focus on local water networks with flexible piping that can be buried and repaired easily.

Aid group World Vision has weighed in on the differences between the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

“Haiti was concentrated and that led to the challenge of tons of aid and hundreds of aid workers being sent into a small zone,” he said. “This quake off the Chilean coast has potential to reach remote areas and thus it will be extremely difficult to assess the number of deaths and amount of damage, but we can expect that children and families will have taken the brunt of it.”