Feeding the Children

Despite all the discouraging news about the lagging Alliance for Progress, the U.S. could find a lift last week in the record of one relatively modest but highly successful program. In 1954, the U.S. started shipping surplus food stocks to Latin America for use in a free school-lunch program. So far, under the Food for Peace program, the U.S. has sent thousands of tons of surplus flour, cornmeal, edible oils, cheese, beans and powdered milk. Distributed by private relief agencies and local officials, the food will help feed 8,300,000 children this year, or 25% of Latin America's school-age population. Another 5,400,000 babies and pregnant women get at least one square meal a day.

In Washington, Food for Peace officials have coined a name for the project--Alianza para los Ninos, meaning Alliance for Children. The food is credited with helping to double Peru's rural school attendance since the program began; school absenteeism in Bolivia has dropped from 38% to 2%, and students now make sure to be on time since latecomers go to the end of the lunch line. Each day in Mexico, more than 1,000,000 schoolchildren receive the donated food. "The lunch is the only reason a lot of parents send their children to school," says Djalma Maranhao, mayor of Natal in Brazil's impoverished Northeast. In Brazil alone, some 3 billion glasses of milk a year are distributed in 25,000 public schools. At the end of a three-month period, reports one Brazilian teacher, most of her pupils gained at least five pounds. With plenty of surplus food where this came from, Food for Peace Director Richard W. Reuter ex pects that within a year the U.S. will be helping to feed one-third of Latin America's schoolchildren.

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