Challenges

Children are severely affected by the globally high rates of hunger and malnutrition, as well as obesity and overweight. Inadequate feeding not only results in poor health, but also reduces children’s long-term life prospects. Hunger decreases children’s cognitive performance and their participation in social life. School feeding contributes to the fight against hunger and malnutrition and helps guarantee the right to adequate food for the school-age population.

Within the framework of the Proyecto Consolidación de Programas de Alimentación Escolar en América Latina y el Caribe (Project for the Consolidation of School Feeding Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean), 19 countries have established activities to strengthen their own programs, 10 of which have implemented the Sustainable Schools model.

Since 2010 the project has the participation of  local administrators from the education, health, agriculture, planning and social development sectors, thus proving its perspective of transversality and intersectorality. From the beginning, inter-institutional technical committees were created in the various countries, facilitating dialogue among the various actors. This intersectoral and intergovernmental articulation methodology has had positive impacts on several other FAO projects and government policies.

Toward a Solution

In partnership with country governments, the Project has developed a methodology known as Sustainable Schools, which aims to generate learning laboratories for school feeding policy in specific municipalities. To date, at least six components have been developed: intersectoral articulation, community participation, adoption of adequate and healthy menus, actions on food and nutrition education, improvement of infrastructure, and purchases for family farming.

The implementation of this sustainable school feeding model aims to promote a school meals program at the national level, with coverage to all students, which guarantees the systematic and continuous supply of fresh and healthy food purchased from local family agriculture, and associated with effective actions of food and nutrition education to promote healthy eating habits.

These school feeding actions contribute to SDGs 1, 2, 4 and 8, once they:

• guarantee access to quality food regularly;
• improve health conditions in the medium and long term;
• are strategies to address dropout and non-learning indicators;
• help tackle malnutrition in all its breadth, including chronic noncommunicable diseases, obesity, and overweight.

At the same time, they positively impact students’ school performance, and improve the economic and social development through family farming purchasing, which generates jobs in rural communities, creates opportunities for women and strengthens local associations and cooperatives. Undoubtedly, all these elements are very important for the reduction of poverty and eradication of hunger.

There are many quantifiable results achieved throughout the project, including:

•  5,200 technicians trained in the participating countries;
• 13,000 students have participated in the study of nutritional data in the region;
• 2,000 participants completed the semi-presential course on the Development of School Feeding Programs based on the Brazilian experience;
• 4 countries enacted specific school feeding laws;
• 3200 schools have been established as a reference for sustainable school feeding;
• More than 5,000 families of farmers have been impacted.