The National Food Assistance Agency (NFAA), through direct funding from the National Social Security and Welfare Corporation (NASSCORP) donated several food items on June 18, 2025 to the Arthington Public School in rural Montserrado County as part of government’s efforts in revitalizing the agency’s pre-war statutory mandate to sustain school feeding programs across the country.
The assorted food items delivered to the schoolchildren and their parents on the compound of the school included 25kg bags of rice, most of which are locally produced, bunches of plantain, corn porridge (‘Kokodolo’), cartoons of sardine, gallons of palm and argo oil, and sacs of mineral drinking water.
In separate remarks that preceded the formal presentation of the items, the Deputy Director General for Operations (DDGO), Hon. Elton S. Dickson and the Program Officer, Ms. Annie Markelee Flomo said the gesture is powered by NASSCORP, a state corporation that is interested in promoting the President’s ARREST agenda for the welfare of the food-insecure segments of the Liberian population to improve the food security and nutrition situation in the country.
According to DDGO Dickson, the food donation to the school is in response to an assessment NFAA conducted a few months ago, revealing the need to support partners in carrying out school feeding for positive learning outcomes. He told parents and some local government officials, headed by Mayor Romeo R. Clarke of the City of Arthington that President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s vision of thinking, loving and building Liberia is for the welfare of all Liberians. “I want to tell you that President Boakai is thinking about your good future, this is why he is making this agency stronger to keep you in school and encourage your other friends who are not in school to also come to school,” Hon. Dickson told scores of jubilant schoolchildren in Arthington City.
Receiving the food items, the Principal of the school, Mr. Jerome O. Peterson thanked the NFAA team for the donation and assured the agency his commitment to ensuring that each school-going child receives ration of the food commodities. Referring to himself as the cluster head of all schools in Arthington, Mr. Peterson disclosed that he had worked tirelessly over the period to derive a disaggregated data of public schoolchildren in various schools existing in Arthington City.
He said the data had since been submitted to Hon. Clarke, emphasizing that all students captured in the data would benefit from the President’s vision of seeing all public schoolchildren smile while in school as a way of boosting enrollment in public schools across the country.
The Principal however disclosed that he had a conversation with Mary’s Meal, an international NGO involved with school feeding program, concerning plans to end the feeding program by the end of the month of June. “I just received a call from Mary’s Meal that the school feeding program will end in this month until next year. So, for the rest of the month up to July, our students would come to school and just go home like that,” the Cluster Head bemoaned. But, according to him, when news of NFAA’s intervention reached Arthington, hopes were awakened again signifying government’s care for its citizens.
Meanwhile, Mayor Romeo R. Clarke recounted the number of engagements he had had with NFAA that culminated into food aid delivery to the public school, saying the agency’s food assistance came at the time when Mary’s Meal is rethinking its commitment to continuously provide the feeding in the face of current global aid cuts. He then lauded President Joseph Nyuma Boakai for ensuring the legal establishment and rebranding of NFAA for the good of Liberia and its citizens.
With the year 2030 set as the global target to achieve ‘zero hunger’, the National Food Assistance Agency (NFAA) was recently legislated as a fully-fledged state institution with the mandate to coordinate all food assistance programs in Liberia in the bid to address and improve food security and nutrition situations in the country.
