改善农村地区学生营养的工程

Early every morning, an elementary school in a rural area of Yunnan Province begins preparing breakfast for its students. The meal includes millet congee, bread and eggs.

One student says he likes to eat breakfast at school, because the food is tasty, and he doesn't have to pay for it.

Currently, there are about 360 students at the school. Previously, whenever students were charged for breakfast, only about 100 of them ate the meal at school. But since the nutrition improvement program began there last February, free breakfasts have been provided every day to them.

According to headmaster Zhang Siwen, the school has signed purchase contracts with 16 local food manufacturers selected through a bidding process. They include milk, eggs, rice and meat suppliers. He says the school carries out strict checks of the food products' production and expiration dates.

The prices of the products are 5 to 10 percent lower than the market price, because 30 schools in the area make joint purchases. For example, a loaf of bread costs one yuan, and a box of milk costs 1.7 yuan.

"There are still 30 cents left in the three-yuan subsidy from the government, so we add an egg to the breakfast. But an egg costs at least 50 cents, so we have to find balance between each day's expenses. Anyway, we make full use of the three-yuan subsidy for each student."

Zhang Siwen says now that each student receives a three-yuan government subsidy each day, the school has to spend an extra 5,000 yuan each month on water, electricity, the cook's salary and gas cylinder. Currently, the costs can only be covered by government-supplied educational funds.

Apart from tight budgets, schools must also deal with other challenges to improve students' nutrition. Zheng Zhihong is headmaster of another rural elementary school in Yunnan Province.

"I think first the transportation conditions around our school are so poor, and we have to pay high transportation costs. Second, the cooking equipment in our canteen far from meets the demand. What's more, we still lack kitchen staff at our school."

Zheng Zhihong says there are 21 elementary schools in the prefecture with about 3,700 students. The extra cost for these schools in cooking equipment installation, cooking material transportation and wages for the kitchen staff is expected to reach as high as 1.18 million yuan, which accounts for half of the annual educational subsidy from the government. Therefore, it is difficult for such schools to update their teaching facilities and tools.

Is there any better way to improve students' nutrition, while making the nutrition program sustainable? Zou Ping, deputy director of the local education authority in Yunnan province, gives his opinion.

"The three yuan should be taken as an additional subsidy. But if students thoroughly rely on this three yuan as their budget for lunch, it will bring about a situation where the meals that previously had been provided by families now become the responsibility of others. That's unreasonable."

Zou says to make full use of the subsidy, schools can encourage students to bring their own staple foods with them and use the three-yuan subsidy only to improve their daily nutritional intake, including protein and vitamins.

Moreover, Zou suggests that schools in different areas jointly select food suppliers through a bidding process, so that the prices of products are lower. They also say the government should invest more money in improving school canteens.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.