- Date
- 17th November 2022
- Categories
- General
Registration is now open to join the upcoming webinar “Fuel-efficient menus and cooking practices to reduce firewood consumption in Rwanda’s National School Feeding Programme – lessons for institutional energy transitions and climate resilience” co-organised by the World Food Programme, Centre for Sustainable Transitions: Energy, Environment and Resilience (STEER) and the Rwandan Ministry of Education, to be held on Tuesday 29 November 2022, 13:00 – 14:00 GMT / 14:00 – 15:00 GMT+1 / 15:00 – 16:00 CAT.
BACKGROUND
Since 2021, the Government of Rwanda (GoR) has been implementing a national school feeding programme (NSFP), reaching 3.5 million pre-primary, primary and secondary students by October 2022. As the NSFP has increased its coverage over recent years, the demand for firewood to cook the meals has also increased. In the absence of proven alternatives, over 90% of schools across Rwanda rely on firewood for their cooking needs. Firewood is increasingly difficult and expensive to procure, burdensome to prepare, and negatively impacts the health of cooks through the smoke it produces. Heavy reliance on firewood in school feeding is also a contributing factor to deforestation and wider environmental degradation, and to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). It is therefore vitally important to help schools use firewood as efficiently as possible, as well as to foster the development of clean and affordable alternative cooking fuels.
This webinar will present the findings of a research study conducted by the World Food Programme and the Centre for Sustainable Transitions: Energy, Environment and Resilience (STEER) at Loughborough University, in collaboration with the Rwandan Ministry of Education, to provide evidence-based guidance to policymakers, schools, and other key stakeholders, focusing on practical measures that can reduce fuel consumption and thus improve the environmental, health-related, and other impacts of school feeding programmes.
WEBINAR AGENDA (GMT)
13:00 – 13:05: Welcome (Dr Long Seng To, Co-Director of STEER)
13:05 – 13:10: Opening remarks (Dr Raffaella Bellanca, Senior Energy for Food Security Advisor at WFP (HQ))
13:10 – 13:20: Introduction: The importance of energy access in school feeding programmes (Suzanna Huber, Energy for Food Security Advisor at WFP (Regional Bureau Nairobi))
13:20–13:35: Research study presentation: background, objectives, key findings and recommendations (Dr Iwona Bisaga, Study Lead)
13:35 – 13:55 Q&A session with a panel of experts
13:55 – 14:00 Closing remarks
Featured Image: Image by CREEC.