Celebrating the transformative impact of school meals
Children enjoying their school meal.
International School Meals Day, celebrated annually on the second Thursday of March, aims to raise awareness of the importance of nutritious school meals for promoting child health, well-being, and learning.
Momentum to ensure that every child has the opportunity to receive a healthy, nutrious meal in school by 2030 is growing.
The Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris on March 27 & 28 will be a crucial opportunity to build on this momentum and secure additional committments to the expansion and improvement of school meals programmes across the world.
“Properly designed school meal programmes that improve the well-being and education of students offer expcetionally high returns on investment and deliver multiple solutions to presing and persistent challenges. The improve school enrolment, children’s nutritional intake for good health, and support to local famers by guaranteeing a market for their produce,” said school meals champion Neema Lugangira, a member of the Tanzanian Parliament.
Unlike a lot of other solutions to complex challenges, school meals are proven to be technically feasible, cost-effective, and possible to deliver at scale.
“For all these reasons momentum to ensure that every child has the opportunity to receive a healthy, nutritious meal in school is growing,” said Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly IPNEd’s Executive Director.
IPNEd is working with parliamentarians to enable them to build the case for school meals and to take action to support the creation, expansion and improvement of schol meal programmes. Our School Meals Toolkit which we produced in partnership with the School Meals Coalition and the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition has suggestions about how members of parliament can use their unquie position to advocate, legislate, finance and provide oversight of government action in support of school meal programmes.
“In conflict zones school meals promote peace and build confidence in the state. In countries facing food insecurity they can be used to support the local agricultural sector, and centralised school food systems can reduce the carbon footprint of the meals provided which can help tackle climate change,” said Sharon Hodgson, a member of the UK Parliament and the Chair of the All Paty Parliamentary Group on School Food.
For all of the reasons, in advance of the Nutrition for Growth summit in Paris - taking place 27-28 March - we hope to see more governments committing to school meals.
We know that the expansion of free school meal programmes plays a vital role in ensuring that every child who is in school is able to concentrate and to learn effectively.
