Integrating food and nutrition, health, agricultural and environmental education towards education for sustainable development: lessons learned from the Healthy Learning Programme in Kenya

Education for sustainable development (ESD) in seen as an opportunity for Kenya and other countries to continuously build its citizens’ capacity towards healthy measures for utilizing the country’s resources to foster sustainable livelihoods and improve the overall quality of life. The Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) and the ESD Strategy for Kenya provide useful policy frameworks to make optimal use of this opportunity. The Healthy Learning programme is contributing to this process by creating opportunities for schoolchildren, their parents and their communities to acquire relevant skills and knowledge related to healthy living and productive lives. The programme resulted from diverse experiences in school health, nutrition and feeding in Kenya. Despite the many positive impacts achieved, most current school feeding programmes have some shortcomings. The food provided is insufficient in quantity and quality, the role that local agriculture can play has largely been ignored, and there are frequent delays in the sourcing and supply of the food to schools. Most school feeding programmes have lacked integrated approaches involving local communities and have ignored other factors such as health and nutrition, sustainable energy sources and use, environmental conservation, and learning about nutrition, agriculture and the environment. The Healthy Learning programme aims to fill this gap by supporting capacity strengthening activities at different levels (national level, district level, and school/community level), encouraging practical learning activities and demonstrations in model schools and their communities, and documenting and researching lessons learned for wider application. The programme facilitates the introduction and strengthening of educational projects like school gardens, agroforestry technologies, livestock development, water management, and other school projects to support learning in sustainability, food and nutrition security and natural resources management in primary schools and their surrounding communities, while at the same time linking current school feeding programmes to local solutions, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. The programme does this by making optimal use of the locally available capacity and resources at district and school levels and by facilitating new and emerging multi-disciplinary partnerships.

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