A Non-Governmental Organization, Connecting Gender for Development, (COGEN), says it trained over 1,560 women in Kaduna State to monitor the delivery of the Home Grown School Feeding Program, (HGSFP) in their host communities.
“As part of the Cohort’s system’s joint mandate to ensure transparency and accountability in the delivery of the school feeding in Kaduna State, Connecting Gender trained local community women across three LGAs to monitor the school feeding program, forming an all women group called the Kaduna Mothers for Accountability (KM4A), to ensure that the project is properly implemented in the public primary schools found in those communities,” a statement by COGEN’s Head of Programs, Courage Galah, says.
According to it, the training will better position mothers to lend their voices in speaking up for community participation and inclusiveness in government projects and making sure their voices are heard.
The statement says, the decision to build capacity of mothers to monitor the HGSFP was reached through a joint consultation with the Kaduna State Multi-Sectoral Committee on HGSFP, adding that the MacArthur foundation HGSFP Cohort members in the state activated this decision by training mothers for the establishment of the KM4A in the State.
“The rational for the KM4A to monitor the school feeding arose from the fact that mothers can be passionate about their children and generally show concern in how children are treated.
“Therefore, building on this assumption and taking into account that women have a role to play in governance, COGEN trained 1,560 community women whose children are in public primary schools in 106 schools across Jema’a, Kaura and Zangon-Kataf LGAs in Kaduna State to continue monitoring the HGSFP in public primary schools.
“The training took place between 10th-23rd May 2021 in Jema’a, Kaura and Zangon-Kataf LGAs. COGEN envisages that the women trained will begin monitoring the implementation of the school feeding program to reduce leakages and hold service providers accountable for their actions in implementing the project in Kaduna State.
“The KM4A is expected to work and build synergy with CBOs tracking the HGSFP,” the statement reads.
COGEN with support from MacArthur Foundation is monitoring the program in sixty schools in Jema’a, Kaura and Zangon-Kataf LGAs, and also enabling community actors to take responsibility of all government projects domiciled in their communities.
