Challenges faced by school feeding committees in Blantyre, Malawi

This study identifies and explores the challenges faced by school feeding committees as service providers to the school feeding programmes in Blantyre rural and urban. It was motivated by the need to provide information, which could be used as a basis to ensure that the nutritional and educational objectives of the School Feeding Programmes could co-exist with the use of local school feeding committees. A review of literature demonstrates that, within the developmental framework, school feeding programmes are a valuable strategy and that there are diverse views as to whether local constituted committees should be the preferred institutional implementation modalities. The findings of this study suggest that while the locally constituted school feeding committees id the best model, they are presented with significant challenges as they run the programmes.Some include; the need to revisit the committee formation process, provide income generating activities for SFC members to reduce dependency that leads to increased gender based violence and abandonment and lack of timely and adequate monitoring of programme by implementers.