Success at the First Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition

IPNEd’s Executive Director, Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly moderates a plenary session at the First Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition, with Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira and Ghanaian MP Peter Nortsu-Kotoe

Opening the School Meals Coalition’s First Global Summit in Paris this week, French President Emmanuel Macron said the event’s ambition was to ensure “That every child by 2030 has access to a healthy and nutritious meal at school every day.”

A range of important announcements were made during the Summit which will help achieve that goal. Five new countries, Suriname, Latvia, St. Vincent & Grenadines, Ukraine and Mongolia joined the Coalition and Brazil announced that it will join France and Finland as a Coalition Co-Chair.

Several countries shared their progress in implementing new commitments such as Kenya which earlier this year announced the creation of Africa’s largest school meal programme. Many other countries used the Summit to announce new commitments to growing the reach and improving the quality of school meals programmes such as the UAE which committed to provide meals to all children in public schools over the next 2 years, Armenia which will assume full ownership of their programme and Somalia which launched a new Home Grown School Feeding Policy. 

The Summit included a plenary session moderated by IPNEd’s Executive Director Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly which included IPNEd members Neema Lugangira of Tanzania and Peter Nortsu-Kotoe of Ghana. They discussed the critical role parliamentarians can play in advocating, making laws for and financing school meal programmes as well as monitoring the implementation of policies, laws and funding arrangements.

“Breaking new ground as the Coalition evolves” plenary session at the First Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition

“Creating a legislative basis for a country’s school meal programme, ensures that the programme has the right institutional arrangements and a clear path to sustained funding which parliamentarians can play a critical role in supporting” said Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe.

“We also know that with a legal framework in place programmes have a better chance of securing cross party support and consequently of surviving a change of government.”

“It was wonderful to see the growth and development of the movement to feed children a nutritious meal at school at the Summit this week,” said Ms Lugangira.

“I’m pleased that we had a chance to share the role of parliamentary leadership and look forward to working with fellow MPs from across the world to deliver our commitment.”

The International Parliamentary Network for Education and the School Meals Coalition will co-publish a toolkit for parliamentarians on school feeding designed to make the case for school feeding to MPs and support them to take action to grow and improve school feeding in their country and globally.

French MP Éléonore Caroit, Ghanaian MP Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira, IPNEd Executive Director Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly