Children Can’t Wait: Emergency School Meals

Children Can’t Wait: Emergency School Meals

 Code: SDO-ESM6C-EDU001

Organization: Sabah Alsudan for Development Organization (SDO)

Location: Khartoum State – Sudan

Project Duration: 6 months (May 2026 – Feb 2027; 173 school days)

Total Funds Requested: 430,000 USD

Beneficiaries: ~7,500 students (boys and girls)

Target Schools: 50 basic schools and medial 

Project Summary:

Children Can’t Wait: Emergency School Meals – Sabah Alsudan for Development Organization (SDO) will provide nutritious breakfast meals 3 days per week to ~7,500 vulnerable children in 50 schools in Khartoum State over 6 months. The project aims to reduce malnutrition, improve academic performance, encourage regular attendance, and raise awareness of healthy nutrition among children, families, and teachers.

The recent conflict in Sudan has caused severe humanitarian challenges, including displacement, poverty, and malnutrition among children. Many schools were damaged or used as shelters for displaced families, resulting in increased school dropout rates and childhood hunger.

Overall objective:

To reduce 30 % of mal-nutrition cases and improve academic performance among  7,500 children less than 13 years in the basic schools around Khartoum State by 2026-2027.

Specific Objectives:

1. Provide 3 nutritious breakfast meals per week.
2. Support severely malnourished children with additional supplements if needed.
3. Increase school attendance and retention.
4. Raise awareness about balanced nutrition.
5. Train teachers and parent councils on food diversification.
6. Promote hygiene practices (handwashing).
7. Monitor academic performance and nutritional status.

Target Beneficiaries:

• Direct: ~7,500 children aged 6–13 from displaced, refugee, and low-income families.
• Indirect: Families (~7,500 households), teachers, parent councils, and the wider community.

Implementation Plan:

• Meals distributed 3 days/week in schools.
• Teachers, parent councils, and volunteers participate in preparation, distribution, and monitoring.
• Awareness workshops for children, families, and teachers.
• Continuous monitoring of attendance, academic performance, and nutritional status.

• 7,500 children receive nutritious breakfast meals 3 days/week.
• Improved academic performance and concentration.
• Increased school attendance and retention, especially girls.
• Increased awareness of healthy nutrition among children, families, and teachers.
• Community engagement in supporting school feeding and nutrition education.

Project Outcome:

7,500 of mal-nourished children have access to therapeutic nutrition, improved access to food of high nutritive value, improved children performance & understanding capacity, built capacity of families and teachers on balance diet provision and change in perception of nutritional culture.

Project Outputs:

Output 1:

Support for awareness on nutritional culture and diversification for,300 teachers and 25,000 households provided.

Output1 Activities:

   Mobilize the teachers and families’ members in the basic schools for the implementation of the awareness workshops.

Prepare the beneficiaries lists and make them ready for the workshop.

 Divide the groups into 4 groups in each school for easy information dissemination and gender balanced.

Execute the awareness workshops on how to improve nutritional status of their children in various selected schools.

Monitor the impact of the intervention on the beneficiaries’ food security situations.

Output 2:

7,500 basic school children received breakfast meals in time, pupils in the school are informed about the importance of quality nutrition and enrollment in the schools increased.

Output 2 Activities:

Mobilize the targeted basic schools around Khartoum State

Procurement of schools’ food for the targeted number of the pupils

dialy distribution of food diet in the school for daily pupils consumption

Prepare the lists of the beneficiaries to receive the supplementary food to boost family nutritional problems.

Follow-up of feeding programs daily and weekly and provides monthly report.

Monitor the impact of the intervention on the beneficiaries’ food security situations. 

Conduct health and hygiene promotion in the schools (Wash Hands )

Description of Beneficiaries;

The data collected by SDO, INGOs, NGOs, Ministry of Education and Instruction (MoE) and UN agencies working in the Education cluster sector indicates that the same activities underlying food gaps in families’ affects performance and understanding capacity of pupils in the basic schools.

There are food gap amid the pupils in basic schools which are indicated in the survey report conducted by UNICEF (2025) 5-6 millions of children are suffering from malnutrition who are living in Sudan and one million Sudanese children are need feeding in school and that  million children under the age of 5 years suffers from acute malnutrition.

Based on the above narrative background mal-nutrition have been a target for intervention to bridge the nutritional gaps among the children less than 13 years in basic and Medill schools at outskirts of Khartoum state being in IDPs camps  and civilian .

Implementation Approaches;

Consultative meetings: These will be conducted with the parent council, teachers and volunteers. The meeting will explain and make clarification of why this project is important to improve children nutritional status. Parents’ council, teachers and volunteers will be introduced to the project objectives, activities and outcome.

Procurement: The organization will form a procurement committee comprising of teachers, parents and volunteers in order to carry out market survey and identify supplier for the school food where the procurement committee evaluate and assess prices and select eligible bidder/suppliers to supply food following the national procurement policy and procedures.

Gender Mainstreaming: The organization will ensure females participate in decision making process in selection and identification of beneficiaries, schools selection to ensure safety and encourage female involvement.

Coordination: The organization will be in direct coordination with Ministries of Education, and Health, and others actors to strengthen the school feeding sector for better improvement.

Monitoring: The organization will form a joint supervision committee comprising of teachers, parents, Ministry of Education to regularly monitor school feeding program. Monthly field visits will be carried to monitor proper implementation of the project and also conduct focal group discussion with parents, teachers, volunteers and pupils in order to ensure implementation of the project reach all beneficiaries direct or indirect.

Reporting: Weekly activity will be reported using a format to facilitate verification and delivery of weekly food ratio. There will be a progress report upon completion of each school term to assess the quantity of food consumption and financial report to be produced on quarterly basis.

Auditing of project report this will include internal and external auditing reports.

Risk/mitigation: Inflation and fluctuation of market prices that may affect procurement of project inputs; therefore the organization will establish a list of selected suppliers/vendors in coordination and collaboration with line ministries under long term agreement to supply the food to school.

In case delay transaction the organization will coordination with suppliers based on grantee assured by the funder to progress with implementation when basic schools opened.

Partnership and sustainability:

Organization will work in collaboration with the ministry of Education, ministry of Health department of nutrition and FAO and other privet sectors sign with them memorandum of understanding (MOU) and technical agreement with HAC and others actors in the field school feeding program. Meanwhile the project on progress, the organization will solicit funds from different donors through development new proposal. Beside that together with schools administration and families will develop strategies and plans on how to sustain school feeding program i.e. (community participating in schools feeding program)

This project provides nutritious breakfast meals 3 days per week to the most vulnerable children in  schools to:

• Reduce malnutrition and improve nutritional status.
• Increase academic performance and classroom focus.
• Encourage regular school attendance, especially for girls.
• Raise awareness among children, families, and teachers about healthy nutrition.
• Support families economically by reducing the cost of breakfast.

Proposed Meal Composition (Per Student):

• Energy: 300–350 kcal per meal
• Protein: 8–10 g
• Fat: 7–10 g