Armenia | Bangladesh | Burkina Faso | Burundi | Cambodia | Cameroon | Chad | Chile | China | Dominican Republic | Democratic Republic of Congo | Finland | France | Gambia | Germany | Guatemala | Honduras | Iraq | Japan | Kenya | Latvia | Lebanon | Lesotho | Liberia | Libya | Luxembourg | Mauritania | Mexico | Mongolia | Peru | Philippines | Rwanda | Sao Tome and Principe | Senegal | Somalia | South Sudan | Sri Lanka | Tajikistan | USA | Zambia

© SIFI/Tigran Arakelyan

• Work with partners to expand national coverage for primary school children in ten regions, including the capital city Yerevan by 2030.
• Develop a national school feeding strategy by 2025.
• Sustain and upgrade the annual budget allocation for school meals.
• Review and update national standards for school meals, keep them relevant and based on scientific evidence while incorporating new healthy food systems.
• Implement a national educational school health and nutrition curriculum that will allow students to learn about the use of green and clean energy, school gardens and food production.

© WFP/Sayed Asif Mahmud

• Increase the annual budget for school meals in the next three years by USD 456 million by November 2023. This will cover the national programme for November 2023 – October 2026.
• Increase the coverage of the national programme to reach 3.5 million schoolchildren from 2.7 million by November 2023.
• Provide diversified and healthy foods in school meals, shifting the food basket from fortified biscuits to seasonal and nutritious foods by November 2023.
• Integrate school meals in the Primary Education Development Program by July 2027.

© WFP/Esther Ouoba

• Provide equitable access to sufficient, healthy and nutritious food for schoolchildren by increasing the share of local food products in school canteens, by developing menus adapted to the nutritional needs of schoolchildren and by promoting health, hygiene and nutrition activities in schools.
• Increase capacity building of actors involved in school food and nutrition by promoting nutrition education and by strengthening the capacities of communal actors in the management of school canteens
• Increase the sustainability of school meal programmes by promoting the consumption of local food products
• Strengthen the legal framework and governance of school canteens and encourage mayors to formulate recommendations and strong commitments to support the functioning of school canteens

© WFP/Arete/Fredrik Lerneryd

• Gradually increase school feeding coverage for pre and primary schools from 24% to 50% by 2027 and 100% by 2032, accompanied by increase in the annual national budget dedicated to school feeding through the Finance Act.
• Revise and update the National School Feeding Policy by 2024 and integrate school feeding into the Food Fortification Policy and the School health/nutrition Strategy by end of 2025.
• Scale up decentralized procurement from smallholder farmers and small to medium-scale food processors, targeting at least 50% of supported schools by 2027.
• Improve quality of meals by introducing menu guides. Include milk, mushrooms, fortified whole maize flour, bio-fortified beans, and enriched mixed flours. Scale up improved energy-saving stoves in 100 schools from the academic year 2024-2025.
• Finalize by the end of 2025 the school feeding impact evaluation, cost-benefit/value for money studies, assessment of nutritional status of school-age children. Mobilize stakeholders, including ministries, universities, donors, and local administration, for an informed policy review and funding to implement recommendations arising from the studies.

© WFP/Arete/Nick Sells

• Increase the share of school meals funded and managed by the Royal Government of Cambodia in areas with high poverty, malnutrition and low educational performance.
• Formalize and operationalize a national school meals policy whilst strengthening its integration across relevant sectoral policies and strategies.
• Optimize the design of the existing program based on good practices and lessons learnt, promoting cost-effective healthy diets while contributing to the local economy.
• Implement a holistic package of complementary activities as part of the national school meals program that supports the human capital development of Cambodian children and their communities.
• Develop a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the performance of the national school meals program, including cross-sectoral performance indicators.
• Take forward the agenda of the School Meals Coalition “Peer to Peer Community of Best practices” as a provider and a recipient of experience and best practices on school meals.

© WFP/Glory Ndaka

• Increase coverage to reach up to one million schoolchildren by 2025.
• Finalize the School Feeding Strategy 2023-2030 and its action plan and include school nutrition in the Education Sector Strategy.
• Set up a school meal programme in collaboration with the decentralized local authorities, technical and financial partners, civil society organizations and sectoral ministries.

© WFP/Evelyn Fey

• From the 2024 Finance Act, the amount of the budget line allocated to the school feeding programme will be increased by 15% each year and effectively disbursed to cover essential needs.
• Pass a law on school food and nutrition by the National Assembly and promulgated by the Head of State by December 2027.
• By 2030, 50% of schools with canteens will operate on the model of school food based on local production.
• School meals will be provided for 20% of primary school pupils by 2030.
• By 2030, 50% of schools with canteens benefit from an integrated health, nutrition and hygiene support programme in schools 2023-2030.
• Starting 2024, a round table bringing together technical and financial partners, the private sector, the 2024 diaspora, civil society and private donors is organised every two years to mobilise resources.

© WFP/Arete/Nick Sells

• Strengthen the inter-sectoral support of our School Feeding Programme through the establishment of institutional agreements. Strengthen the Gastronomic Laboratory for the promotion of innovation in the school meal programme, incorporating healthy products with local relevance and preparations from other countries in school canteens.
• Support research on child nutrition in Chile by organizing and providing access to statistics, data and knowledge generated by the operation of the School Feeding Programme.
• Be an active part of knowledge sharing on best practices in school feeding, participating in experience sharing activities with other countries (study visits, case studies, technical assistance), in relation to impactful, nutritious school meals within the scope of sustainable food systems.

© WFP/PMO

• Advance the nationwide scheme on rural school meal improvement by funding school meal projects, improving administration and coordination at all national levels, and steadily scaling up the scheme.
• Encourage the sourcing of locally-produced food and boost local agro-product markets and farmers’ employment through conducting centralized procurement and signing supply contracts with farmers.
• Engage multiple stakeholders in the nutrition enhancement program and enhance its visibility. The government will engage and coordinate efforts of community-level organizations such as urban and rural residents’ committees, and enterprises, foundations and charities to improve nutrition of school meals.
• Advocate food-saving behavior and healthy diets through school meals projects.
• Strengthen research on school meal nutrition and develop a guidance on meal preparation to improve school meal quality. We plan to join relevant international research networks to learn best practices of other countries and share China’s experience.

© Government of Finland/Virpi Kulomaa

• Finland’s Minister for Foreign Trade and Development will serve as a School Meals Coalition Champion and co-chair, advocating for school meals globally. Finland remains committed to advancing the Coalition’s objectives by co-leading the Coalition’s taskforce and coordinating strategic activities.
• Finland has increased its financial support to school meal programmes globally in the past years. In 2023 Finland will be contributing EUR 3 million. It also contributes financially to the work of the School Meals Secretariat.
• Finland pledges to adopt school meals procurement criteria that prioritize environmentally friendly cultivation, food safety, nutrition, animal welfare, and pupil involvement in planning and assessment.
• Finland continues to offer technical expertise for countries developing school meals programs, facilitating support through a dedicated website.

© WFP/Ahmed Altaf

• Starting 2022, the meals served in school must consist of at least 50% of sustainable and quality products, including at least 20% of products from organic farming. To widen everyone’s access to school meals, aid for school canteens in rural communities (€ 50 million) have been put in place.
• France commits to advocate for school meals in global agendas, such as the G7, G20 and promote the Coalition during exchanges with representatives of states and governments.
• France will provide a secondment to support the work of the Sustainable Financing Taskforce.
• France has increased its financing for operations. In addition, some of the food aid projects financed by France in countries in food crisis will focus in particular on support for school meals, as is the case in 2021 in Afghanistan (up to 13 million euros), Algeria, Ethiopia, Halti, Niger, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela.
• France committed to joining the Peer-to-Peer Network led by Germany for the exchange of good practices and engaging the Research Consortium through French academic institutions, who will be working on capturing the national best practices and lessons learned in a case study, supported by French academic institutions.

© WFP/Mamadou Jallow

• Scale up home grown school feeding programs to cover all public schools in the Gambia by the year, 2030 and empower mothers’ clubs and other relevant stakeholders to effectively implement home grown school feeding programs.
• Create a fiscal space to maintain an incremental school feeding budget line that will always adequately support all vulnerable children at any given time.
• Re-introduce regular deworming under the school feeding programme to intensify the nutritional health of children.
• Adopt a broad-based multisectoral approach for the implementation of the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme and create strong linkages between the production/supply side (Ministry of Agriculture and smallholder farmers) and the demands /school meals delivery side (Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education), while endeavoring to support and enhance the capacities to deliver, of both sides of the equation.
• Increase and strengthen capacity at the national School Agriculture and Food Management Unit. Streamline the human resource and organizational structure and institute and maintain a national multi-stakeholder steering committee to effectively support quality school meals planning, implementation and monitoring for greater success.

© WFP/Hebatallah Munassar

• Establish a peer-to-peer network under the umbrella of the School Meals Coalition to promote of the exchange of experience between interested experts of national governments and regional organizations and thus support countries that are willing to establish, adjust or expand their school meals programme.
• The Federal Government will continue to promote the development and implementation of integral quality standards for school meals. Based on the lessons learned, a validated method for establishing dietary guidelines and quality standards will be developed, which will be disseminated in more lowand middle- income countries and hence contribute to improving children’s food and nutritional situation.
• Provide recovery and rehabilitation support for school meals programmes in order to improve the nutritional situation of children and their families and strengthen their resilience to future crisis. Together with WFP, UNICEF and FAO, we will continue to implement programmes in several contexts and countries and complement them with WASH action or by improving income-earning opportunities for neighboring communities.

© WFP/Giulio d’Adamo

• Continue implementing mechanisms that allow us to provide school meals based on the human right to food, which is adequate, nutritious, safe and with cultural, social and ethnic relevance, contributing to the nutrition and health of boys and girls.
• Share experiences, best practices and evidence on the implementation of the School Feeding Programme in Guatemala with the different countries adhering to the Coalition.
• Address bottlenecks and promote actions that lead to the improvement of the school feeding programme through research, inter-institutional and multi-sectoral coordination, including academia and the private sector.

© WFP/Srawan Shrestha

• Share insights into Japan’s advanced school lunch system, promotion of food education and initiatives of the private sector relevant to school lunches according to the interest of partner countries.
• Contribute, through bilateral assistance in the field of school lunches, to the capacity building and human resource development of developing countries for the implementation of school lunch systems, the promotion of home-grown school lunches, and the introduction of food education.
• Contribute to the school feeding programmes of WFP, supporting the children that have lost access to school meals during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuring that children are able to meet basic nutritional needs in times of emergency.
• Enhance the international attention on school lunches by advocating for the importance of school lunches, nutrition and health at global forums.
• Promote school lunch and “Shokuiku” in Japan, with an emphasis on nutritionally balanced school lunches, advancing further use of local produce in school lunches and implementing “Shokuiku” throughout school education activities based on relevant regulations such as the School Lunch Program Act.

© WFP/Martin Karimi

• Expand the coverage from the current 1.9 million children to universal coverage by 2030.
• Develop a national policy on school meals by June 2023.
• Establish a national school meals coalition and hold annual school meals stakeholder conferences with the aim of strengthening national coordination of the programme.
• Roll out a digitalized school meals data and reporting module within the National Education Management Information System by December 2023.
• Work with multiple stakeholders to introduce green technologies that provide clean energy solutions to support safe food preparation.
• Encourage school gardens through the re- established 4-k clubs for introduction of healthy diets and for the sustainability of the school meals programme.

• Generate data around the supply and demand of the national school meals system to define measurable targets and results.
• Foster dialogues with municipalities, schools and food suppliers to promote seasonal products and ensure a green and sustainable food procurement.
• Evaluate and improve the impact of school meals on the environment by increasing supply of local food and reducing food waste and loss.

© WFP/Rein Skullerud

• Develop a long-term plan to increase the provision of snacks or full meals in schools for all children, especially the most vulnerable.
• Developing a national strategy and policy on school meals, including them in the educational strategy, and coordinating with the concerned authorities in cooperation with communities and stakeholders, as well as adopting guidelines on a healthy school environment and nutritional standards.
• Develop a new methodology within the framework of the school health programme, to include school meals with other complementary health and environmental activities, for example, ensuring the cleanliness of the water and sanitation system and the obligation to give the necessary vaccinations, as well as caring for the establishment of school gardens or the provision of green spaces as much as possible.

© WFP/Aina Andrianalizaha

• Enforce policy provisions requiring the procurement of 80% of food commodities from local smallholder farmers, as well as ecologically friendly farming methods, food safety, nutrition, and health issues.
• Create and enact school feeding legislation to protect the current school feeding budget.
• Increase school feeding budget by at least 50% in fiscal year 2024/2025 to cater for an increase in cost per meal within the next three years and to sustain monitoring and research, capacity strengthening of personnel, small holder farmers support for increased productivity and supply, interinstitutional and multi-sectoral coordination.
• Form a high-level multi-sectoral school feeding steering committee chaired by the Principal Secretary of Education and Training and comprised of different ministries.
• Conduct a value for money case study for the Lesotho school feeding program during the fiscal year 2024/2025

© WFP/John Monibah

• Increase the coverage of the school meals programme by 45 percent from 1,110 schools to 1,610 schools to cover 332,000 schools by 30 June 2025.
• Revise the National School Feeding Policy by 30 June 2024.
• Establish a sustainable budget line for the school meal program in the national budget and increase the yearly allocation to USD 5 million in the next two years by 30 June 2024.
• Develop guidelines for the integration of school health and nutrition into the school feeding programme by 30 June 2024.

© WFP/Zakaria Thaij

• By 2026, an increase of coverage of children receiving school meals from 50,000 to 2,100,000 with the aim to reach universal coverage by 2030.
• By the end of 2025, to develop a comprehensive national strategy and policy framework for the effective implementation, financing and sustainability of the national school meal programme.
• Secure an annual budget for the school meal programme and explore innovative financing mechanisms between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Industry to leverage local resources and stimulate economic growth, job opportunities, and sustainability.
• Conduct annual awareness campaigns with civil society organizations to promote the importance of school feeding.
• Build 1,500 schools over the next three years with school kitchen that will use clean energy for cooking.
• Establish a national database for school feeding to monitor and track progress and objectives of the programme.

• Increase the provision of free school meals, ensuring access to nutritious food for all and make school meals more sustainable by promoting 0 km food and short distance purchasing to avoid environmental impacts of large distance transportation of food.
• Increase organic, seasonal and local production for school meals, with at least 50% local products of which 2/5 stem from organic farming.
• Ensure the delivery of sustainable, diversified and balanced diets by increasing the variety of vegetarian and vegan dishes, with 50% of plant-based proteins on all menus.
• Combat food waste and plastic pollution in school canteens by e.g. adapting meal offers, selling leftover food at reduced prices, setting up drink fountains, avoiding single use plastic.
• Support school meal programmes in the partner countries of Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation, as well as programmes in emergency and fragile contexts.

© WFP/Bechir Malum

• Implement measures to provide rations to 50% of school children in primary schools, focusing on disadvantaged areas and assess ways to progressively take charge of lower secondary education, particularly in rural areas where drop-out rates are very high.
• Promote the supply of local food products to canteens and seek the most appropriate approaches and ways of involving and strengthening the capacities of community groups.
• Encourage municipalities, government stakeholders, and local partners to collaboratively manage school canteens and diversify sustainable partnerships for adequate funding of the National School Feeding Programme.

© WFP/Elio Rujano

• By 2025, prioritise the inclusion of school feeding programmes in the national agenda by favoring governmental actions that have an impact at the national level.
• By 2030, increase access to safe and nutritious food for children by promoting quality food, as well as by integrating regional foods in government school feeding programmes.
• By 2030, continue to provide technical assistance, as well as to promote the exchange of good practices in school feeding at the regional and global level, considering cultural relevance, nutritional surveillance, the operation of food programmes and the transition from cold to hot meals to countries that require it.

© WFP/Semira Comunicaciones

• Establish a strategy to improve the school menu in the form of ready-to-eat, prepared food
  rations, with increased diversification and a culturally relevant approach.
• Promote a joint work proposal with national and international academic institutions for evidence
  generation on healthy school feeding, with the support of strategic allies and the adoption of
  digital tools.
• Develop a national healthy school feeding strategy that strengthens capacities for coordination,
  implementation and participation of the education community.

© WFP/Rein Skullerud

• Provide Fortified Rice (iron) in school feeding programs to address malnutrition.
• Introduce home-grown school feeding and link schools to the community and the small-scale farmers for sustainable, gender-transformative and income-generating food production and supply.
• Increase fiscal support to school meals and improve the quality and coverage of the program towards universal feeding.
• Implement existing and advocate for stronger policies to promote healthy food choices among schoolchildren, including those that provide guidance on foods and beverages sold or marketed in schools or to schoolchildren, and those that regulate food industry advertisements and sponsorships targeting schools.

© WFP/Fredrik-Lerneryd

• Committed to achieve universal coverage of school feeding for basic education; to review and update the National Comprehensive School Feeding Policy and strategy on a regular basis, to ensure it is relevant and inclusive. o During the launch of the Sustainable Financing Initiative Rwanda announced impressive progress by increasing their budget from USD 33 million to USD 44 million and the coverage from 660,000 to 3.8 million students.
• Committed to establish, build capacity, and sustain school feeding coordination structures and stakeholders at the national and decentralized levels. to maximize the impact of school feeding 4 programmes on the local market through the development of the local school feeding commodity supply chain and market linkages in close collaboration with stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
• Committed to sustain the annual budget allocated to the national school feeding programme.
• Committed to participate in peer-to-peer exchange and learning activities with other countries and global school feeding stakeholders for impactful, nutritious, and sustainable school feeding programmes (Study visits, conferences, case studies, technical assistance).
• Commit to support and build connections between national academic institutions and the school feeding research consortium, government and other relevant initiatives related to school feeding research and learning.

© WFP/Richard Mbouet

• Extend the national coverage of the school canteen programme to 65% of the country’ s public
  elementary schools, with priority to rural schools and those located in disadvantaged peri-urban
  areas, by the end of 2028.
• Launch the National School Canteen Programme (PNCS) during the first half of the current school
  year 2023-2024, for an initial phase of 5 years. By the end it will reach more than 1.4 million children
  in the 14 regions of the country. A budget line of USD 2.7 million is available for the current school
  year, which will involve 107,000 schoolchildren in 635 elementary schools in 7 regions of the
  country;
• Adopt a law on school food based on local production by the end of 2024.
• Finalize the review of the school food policy and draw up a strategic plan to make it operational
  by December 2024.

© WFP

• Extend the coverage of school meals up to compulsory basic education (Grade 9) by 2030.
• Implementation of the School Feeding Law, to generate funding for the Programme through designated taxation by 31 December 2024, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance.
• Carry out a review of the programme by 31 December 2024, to report on the impact and lessons learned after full ownership by the government.
• Reduce the country’s dependence on food imports and increase local production and consumption through diversification by 2030.

© WFP/Carol Taylor

• Reach universal coverage of primary school children in public schools by 2026 and extend the school meals programme to the public secondary schools by 2030.
• Scale up the home-grown school feeding programme with 70% of food sourced locally by 2025.
• Ensure that all schools are up to the national WASH promotion standard by 2026.
• Develop and implement a national school health policy by 2024.
• Develop a country case value for money study with the support of the School Meals Coalition’s Research Consortium by 2025.
• Implement a digitalization strategy and tool to monitor the national school health policy at all levels by 2026.
• Mandatory inclusion of fortified rice for the national school meal programme for all meals containing rice.

© WFP/Patrtick Mwangi

• Finalize, endorse and implement the National School Feeding Policy and ensure the national school meal programme it is well articulated in the government plans, the Education Sector Analysis, Education Sector Strategic Plans 2022-2026, Somalia National Development plan.
• Establish a multi sectoral coordination mechanism for the implementation of the School Meals Programme and engage new partners to support school meals both technically and financially, with a specific focus on the private sector.
• Advocate on the importance of school meals to increase local and national awareness.

© WFP/Nozim Nazri

• By 2027, increase the school meals coverage coverage of primary school students to 50%
• By 2027, upgrade, renovate and ensure technological restructuring of school canteens, development of modem production and logistics infrastructure for reaching 100% of schools by 2027.
• Establish sustainable market for agricultural products of local producers and the formation of sustainable and long-term links between agricultural producers and school catering establishments.

© WFP/Vilakhone Sipaseuth

• USDA is investing in additional research and innovation over the coming years. Research shows that updated program standards have had a positive and significant influence on nutrition quality over the last decade for school meal recipients in the United States.
• The United States commits to working with Coalition members, building on contributions and lessons learned from the U.S. McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, to advance the day when every child is well nourished and well educated.

© WFP/Mamadou Jallow

• Investing in scaling up coverage of the Home-Grown School Meals programme, integrating nutrition and ensuring linkages to the agricultural sector to contribute to a sustainable food system.
• Providing effective coordination across relevant sectors for greater impact across education, agriculture, nutrition, health and social protection sectors, collaborating with national, regional and international stakeholders to support the Home-Grown School Meals programme.
• Institutionalise into the Home-Grown School Meals programme robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks, accountability tools including capacities to improve effective and efficient management of the programme.
• Invest in research and knowledge management to document as well as share best practices and lessons to improve implementation and inform the design and management of Home-Grown School Meals programmes through the South to South and Triangular Cooperation Framework.