The School Meals Coalition hosted the “School Meals Powering Food Systems” session at the Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment held in Rome, Italy, on 24 July 2023. The summit ran through 24 to 26 July with hundreds of participants in attendance where governments shared the progress they have made in two years and announced new commitments. The session showed how School Meal programmes can operate across policy siloes and – above all – produce results.
The UN Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Amina Mohamed closed the session with four calls to action for governments:
- work to reach all 730 million school children by 2030 with nutritious meals;
- make changes to the programmes so they can be more sustainable and climate-friendly, including adopting targets for local purchase (like Brazil, which has a target of 30% of purchase from smallholder farmers);
- integrate school meals into climate finance; and
- develop a plan of action to mobilise the $1.7bn needed to low income countries, among others, through debt relief.
The School Meals Coalition Achievements
84 Governments have joined the Coalition.
95 Partners are collaborating with Governments.
USD 5 billion in increase in domestic funding that scaled up School Meal Programmes.
15% surge in domestic funding of school meals by Governments in developing countries.
418 million children are now receiving meals up from 388 million children in early 2020.
4 million jobs direct jobs created most of them benefitting women.
Achievements in the past two years
Benin announced a national budget commitment of US$ 270M dollars over the next five years to scale up their national programme.
Kenya commits to scale up coverage from 1.8M to 10M children by 2030. In 2023, the budget for school meals was more than doubled to US$ 3M.
Niger will increase its national funding to reach 25% in 2026 and 50% of children by 2030, especially the most vulnerable.
Rwanda scaled up the national school meals programme from 660,000 children in 2020 to 3.8M children in 2022.
The United States has called for the universal provision of school meals and is aiming to reach 30M children nationally by 2032.
By 2023, restore the progress we made by supporting all countries as they re-establish effective school meal programmes and repair what was lost during the pandemic.
By 2030, reach those we missed. The most vulnerable, in low and lower-middle-income countries, were not being reached even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
By 2030, improve our approach by improving the quality and efficiency of existing school meals programmes in all countries by facilitating a healthy food environment in schools and promoting safe, nutritious, and sustainably produced food.
- By 2023, restore the progress we made by supporting all countries as they re-establish effective school meal programmes and repair what was lost during the pandemic.
- By 2030, reach those we missed. The most vulnerable, in low and lower-middle-income countries, were not being reached even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- By 2030, improve our approach by improving the quality and efficiency of existing school meals programmes in all countries by facilitating a healthy food environment in schools and promoting safe, nutritious, and sustainably produced food.
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