CAIRO: The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) signed a new one million Egyptian Pounds ($200,000 dollars) partnership agreement this week with Pepsico Tomooh education program to provide school meals to vulnerable children in community-based schools in Sohag, Upper Egypt. WFP and Tomooh Pepsico's partnership initiatives started in Egypt in 2007. The announcement was made in Cairo at a star-studded gala dinner hosted by Saad Abdul-Latif, founder of the Tomooh education program and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo Asia, Middle East & Africa in the presence of government officials, members of the diplomatic and business communities, WFP staff, and celebrities in Egypt. The one-year grant will be used to purchase a daily morning snack to fight short-term hunger and increase children's capacity to learn. In addition, youngsters receive a monthly take-home ration of rice. The take-home rations are an incentive for poorer families, to encourage them to send their children to school regularly. “Tomooh in Egypt reaches some of the most disadvantaged children in society and opens the door for them to a world of opportunity,” said Abdul-Latif, a long-time advocate of empowering youth through education. “Children should not be faced with a choice between food or going to school,” he told the audience. “By working with the World Food Program, Tomooh enables young people to receive the education they need today to become successful business and community leaders in the future,” he added. During the past three years, the joint partnership has helped more than 2,650 of the most needy children and their families – a total of some 13,000 people in Sohag Governorate – covering 84 schools in the Dar El Salam, Geheina, and Saqulta districts. To date, PepsiCo's contribution to WFP for its Food for Education programs has totaled half a million dollars. “WFP Food for Education activities are part of a wider, 5-year, country programme which aims to enhance the nutritional status of women and children,” said Gianpietro Bordignon, WFP Representative and Country Director, Egypt. “The distributed snack is fortified with all the necessary vitamins and iron, meeting around 25 percent of the child's nutritional daily needs, while the take-home rations can amount to 20 percent of the family's monthly expenditure on food,” he said. “But the food transfer is conditional, in that it is subject to the child achieving a monthly attendance rate of at least 80 percent,” he added. Addressing the audience at the gala dinner, Daly Belgasmi, WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe thanked PepsiCo Tomooh for their commitment to the fight against hunger and described the partnership as “an exemplary model of how WFP works with the private sector and the government to address immediate national priorities.” The project supports the Government's efforts to improve the quality of education by 2015, in line with the target set under the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. “Our ongoing commitment to helping young people achieve their ambitions through education is part of PepsiCo's vision of Performance with Purpose,” said Abdul-Latif in a press release. “Partnerships with local governments, NGOs and community groups in the areas where we operate are an important way for us to achieve our goal of delivering sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and our planet,” he continued. BM
