Educating of females in Amran Governorate [Archives:2004/729/Local News]

Mohammed bin Sallam
Ms. Sheila Sisulu, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), inaugurated the food support program presented by WFP to two schools and a health center in Dhe Bayn Region, Amran Governorate. More than 5590 female students from three provinces will benefit from this program.
The project aims to encourage females to seek education, by giving each female student a total of 150 kg of grain and 9 liters of cooking oil per year, in addition to 80 pregnant women who are supplied with grain, oil and sugar during their pregnancies and the families of 120 infants who receive soybeans and sugar during the first nine months of their birth.
In a statement to the press, Ms. Sisulu said, “We are pleased to cooperate with the Yemeni Government. We focus on education and health to encourage female education. We hope that the Yemeni Government will set the education of females as a priority, if the female was educated, the family would be educated, productive and in good health also if females are being taken care of, their children have a better capability of learning. An educated society produces a society familiar with its rights, healthy, productive and does not a need outside support.”
She added, “The Yemeni Government is assisting in this direction through the schools' nourishment of Ministry of Education. We hope that the Government will double its support to this segment of people and we in our turn would seek other sources from donors to support it.”
Ms. Sisula concluded her statement by saying that the program works in 17 governorates, the exceptions are Sana'a, Aden and Al-Mahra. Al-Mahra needs our support but, the scattered population of the remote desert regions hinders their work.
The Mayor of Amran, Mr. Taha Abdullah Hajer, praised the UN support to Yemen and asked for the intensification of support to include the whole governorate, the most needy of all governorates as he described it. He said, “Amran governorate is inhibited by 1.8 million people, and the rate of poverty is very high. Thus, the majority of male and female students do not go to schools, especially females. There are even some provinces which do not record any registration of females in their schools. Health service is almost absent in a majority of the provinces.”
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