Food for education: strategies for sustainable school meals programs

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Approximately 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone. Malnutrition and hunger affect children’s ability to develop, play, and study. Preschool age children should eat five times per day (three meals and two snacks). Older school age children need to eat at least three meals per day. When children fail to get enough nutrients—both macro- and micronutrients—they are unable to learn effectively in school. School Meal projects aim to “reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education, especially for girls” (USDA). These projects help increase enrollment and improve children’s ability to read by supporting school meals.

School meal programs are complex. When food is prepared at school, it should be healthy and safe and should include of all food groups in the school meal, particularly fruits and vegetables. Some programs provide fortified foods, while others add micronutrient powders or other supplements to school meals. Schools may consider using foods produced from a school garden but gardens to supplement school-provided meals, though often gardens cannot support the full school meal. Food hygiene is critical to school meal programs, and ideally, school meal programs should be complemented by communication messages to the family to give more food to the most undernourished child in the family (Bundy 2010; Kristjansson 2015).

School meals can take many forms. Meals or snacks can either be prepared at the school or be brought by the children from home. In some projects, parents are asked to send leftover food to school with their children so that the children have a meal to eat at school. Other projects provide a “take home” ration to encourage attendance. These methods are critical to successful handover of projects to host governments to ensure that the complicated but critical programs are sustained.

These 3 panels focus on different elements of school meals that lead to sustainability: Political Will; Change in Literacy Level; and Adoption of WASH in schools standards.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Individual Presentations

• Evidence-based support for school meal programs - Arlene Mitchell, Global Child Nutrition Foundation

• Beoog Biiga II (BBII), Tomorrow’s Child, Burkina Faso - Desire Yameogo, Save the Children

• Invest for Education Development in the Highlands (IDEA) of Guatemala - Lucrecia Mendez, SCI