| UNESCO
SUB-REGIONAL WORKSHOP ON FRESH
EXPANSION
OF THE JAPAN-FUNDED Comprehensive School Health, Nutrition
and Hygiene/School Feeding Programme (CSHNH/SFP) to
at least three more SEAMEO member countries started
with the UNESCO Sub-Regional Workshop on FRESH (Focusing
Resources on Effective School Health) held November
17-21, 2003 at SEAMEO INNOTECH. The workshop was attended
by more than 60 participants from Indonesia, Malaysia,
Japan, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines and experts
from the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Children’s
Fund, World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and UNESCO
Asia Pacific Regional Bureau for Education.
The
CSHNH/SFP is an international cooperation activity carried
out in partnership with Japan’s Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Implemented
in Lao PDR, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand in 2003,
it will expand in 2004 to Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines. The project’s main activity is training
appropriate personnel who will ensure that school health
and nutrition issues are adequately addressed in national
EFA plans under the framework of FRESH.
Launched
at the World Education Forum in 2000, the FRESH initiative
promotes an integrated approach to school health and
nutrition for the school-aged child through activities
implemented by UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, World Health
Organisation, Education International and the World
Food Programme. FRESH will shed light on the linkages
between good health and better learning and create a
relevant model for interagency and intersectoral cooperation
linked to other health education programmes supported
by the United Nations, governments, NGOs and other partners
in member countries.
As
an initial step in the programme’s expansion,
the workshop hosted by SEAMEO INNOTECH aimed to:
•
raise awareness of participants on the important links
between physical and emotional health, nutrition and
education and the value of implementing comprehensive
school health programmes as a strategy for achieving
the goal of Education for All (EFA), and with the inclusion
of children with special needs;
• promote integration of school health and nutrition
concepts in national policies and plans for Education
for All;
• discuss how issues such as school nutrition
and HIV/AIDS prevention can be used as entry points
for the development of a comprehensive school health
programme (e.g. FRESH);
• share information and review the essential components
and strategies on FRESH, as well as to present the activities
of different FRESH partners, and to mobilise their cooperation
in the targeted countries;
• identify potential research areas clarifying
the relationships between health, cognitive development,
school participation and academic achievement;
• encourage cooperation between representatives
of the health and education sectors in order to promote
comprehensive school health programmes;
• promote information exchange and networking
between countries in the area of effective school health.
Philippine
Education Secretary Edilberto De Jesus, represented
by Undersecretary Ramon Bacani, opened the forum by
pointing out that a country’s effort to improve
economic productivity and increase learning achievement
rests on a strong and healthy citizenry. For his part,
Asian Development Bank’s Lead Education Specialist
William Loxley echoed UNESCO’s declaration that
“good health for students means higher school
enrolment and attendance and optimizes government investment
in education.”
One
of the forum’s lead convenors, Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan,
who heads the National Institutes of Health Philippines,
underscored the value of school health programs that
have increasingly been recognized in the past decade,
citing global cooperation and individual country initiatives,
as well as the realization by international agencies
of the importance of school health programs that serve
as cost-effective public health interventions.
His
paper asserts that in order to allow school health programs
to be fully comprehensive and to allow the growth of
already existing programs, the infrastructure for school
health needs to be set up or improved. While recognizing
basic framework of policies, resources and organizational
structures and systems that are already in place, he
reiterated the need to create and replicate these structures
in different levels, pointing out the need for a strong
national leadership at the same time. This calls for
interagency cooperation among major stakeholders including
non-governmental organizations. In the international
front, Dr. Tan pointed out that, in the same way that
emphasis on multi-stakeholder cooperation is placed
on the different levels of school health infrastructure,
so too is the ardent need for convergence among international
agencies.
In
his workshop summation, Dr. Tan recounted successful
efforts already undertaken in school health and nutrition.
These include established frameworks for program development;
strong support from international, government, non-government
and private sectors for the school health movement;
and structures for policy development and program implementation.
Future efforts, he said, need to be concentrated on
improving the participation of children on matters that
affect them, sustaining leadership in school health,
actively generating resources for school health, and
sharing information and experiences.
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