{"id":6051,"date":"2019-10-22T08:24:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T05:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6051"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","slug":"too-hungry-to-go-to-class-south-africas-university-students-need-better-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/22\/too-hungry-to-go-to-class-south-africas-university-students-need-better-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Hungry To Go To Class: South Africa\u2019s University Students Need Better Support"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Stella Sabi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The South African university student population has changed\nover the past 20 years to reflect wider society more closely than before. It\u2019s\nno surprise therefore that more students need support than before. The homes\nthey come from are also\nstruggling<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what is perhaps surprising is that students who are receiving\ngovernment financial support are still vulnerable to hunger. They are also\nreluctant to use the extra support that\u2019s available, and their health and\nstudies suffer as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student vulnerability to hunger has\nemerged<\/a> as an alarming problem at South African higher education\ninstitutions. The National\nStudent Financial Aid Scheme<\/a> covers school fees, accommodation and a\nstipend, but is leaving a big gap: food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where nearly half the\nstudents are from poor households, meal vouchers and food hampers have been\noffered since 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research by my colleagues and I<\/a>\u00a0reviewed whether this is making a difference. We found that more than half of the students in the study sometimes went hungry and that\u00a0less than 10%<\/a>\u00a0of food-insecure students, or those from poor households, had taken advantage of the program. This is largely due to a lack of program awareness, and negative perceptions associated with food handouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food insecurity impacts on students\u2019 ability to focus,\nattend class and therefore academic outcomes. An urgent food security\nintervention is needed to stop this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More students need to know about the program, and more needs\nto be done to keep students who are beneficiaries anonymous so that they don\u2019t\nfeel ashamed to access it. In addition to this, the government should offer\nfinancial support to campus food security interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food insecurity<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the study, we asked 500 university students to\nparticipate using a questionnaire that included questions such as \u201chow many\nmeals do you eat on a normal day?\u201d and \u201cin the last 30 days, did you eat\nsmaller meals due to a lack of resources?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We explored how vulnerable they were to food insecurity\nusing the household\nfood insecurity access scale<\/a>. The experience of food insecurity causes\ncertain reactions \u2013 such as feelings of uncertainty or anxiety \u2013 over food and\nresponses \u2013 such as eating less food \u2013 which are put into a scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study also examined what the students reported about\ntheir eating habits \u201cin normal circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that vulnerability to food insecurity was evident in over half (51.3%) of the students. These students sacrificed a meal due to a lack of resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 10% of them were highly vulnerable to food insecurity.\nBecause they couldn\u2019t afford it, these students either only ate one meal during\nthe day, or would starve throughout the day and eat only at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food insecurity has a huge impact on health, well-being and academic performance. Nearly 65% of the students indicated that hunger affected their energy levels and ability to think. About 30% of them were unable to attend a class as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being food insecure was linked to students\u2019 source of funding and lack of resources. More specifically, most food-insecure students were\u00a0sponsored by<\/a>\u00a0the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and come from impoverished families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stella Sabi The South African university student population has changed over the past 20 years to reflect wider society more closely than before. It\u2019s no surprise therefore that more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}