With the support of the US Government and the USDA Nascent Solutions is launching the McGovern-Dole Food For Education and Child Nutrition Program in Malawi. The program will provide agricultural commodities, financial and technical assistance with the objectives of: increasing school attendance and pupil attentiveness with school meals, sensitizing poor and rural communities on the importance of child education, establish school gardens to support and sustain school nutrition, undertake the construction and repair of classrooms and school kitchens and sanitary toilets. Two key components will be the encouragement of broad institutional and cultural buy-in with respect to the importance of childhood education and nutrition, particularly in girls and establishing partnerships for the implimentation of best good governance practice in the areas of education and child nutrition. The program will be implemented in the Central and Southern Regions of Malawi and the benchmarks will be to:

• Increase student enrollment and attendance by raising community awareness on the importance of education and distributing attendance-based take home rations;
• Increase teacher attendance by collaborating with the government to institutionalize an attendance-based incentive program;
• Improve the quality of literacy instruction by training early grade teachers and administrators in improved teaching methods;
• Increase student literacy by procuring and distributing quality literacy teaching and
learning materials (TLMs) to teachers and students and establishing community reading centers;
• Increase student attendance and attentiveness by preparing and serving a daily school breakfast;
• Increase the use of good health, hygiene and nutrition practices through behavior change and local food production training; and
• Increase the capacity of key government agencies to support and sustain the national
school-meals program.