How School meals enable access to quality education in Ethiopia and Haiti

Published on 7 January 2024 at 13:04

 

(Adopted from SMC white paper abstract)

There is an urgent need to rethink our global food systems. The world is facing a nutrition crisis, and the way we produce and consume food is altering the equilibrium of our planet, causing environmental damage and biodiversity loss, and climate change which further compromises food security. Children are disproportionately affected, and school meals are being increasingly recognized as a key investment for governments to tackle these challenges. Through national school meals programs, around 418 million children currently receive a meal at school every day. This provides an exceptional opportunity for the implementation planet-friendly policies which have enormous co-benefits for child health and the wider society. To explore these opportunities, this White Paper was prepared by The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, an initiative of The School Meals Coalition (SMC), a multilateral coalition of 95+ countries aiming to improve and expand national school meal programs for all children.

The full paper is available here: _School-meals-and-food-systems.pdf

There are two areas for action according to SMC white paper:

  1. Policy changes to national school meals programs ▪ Nutrient rich diverse menus: ▪ Establish context-specific, evidence-informed national nutrition and food standards for school meals that adequately integrate sustainability considerations. ▪ Shift to nutrient rich, climate resilient, and culturally relevant foods, ensuring a diverse school diet including whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables and small amounts of low impact animal foods, such as sustainable aquatic foods: there is a particular role here for menu planning tools which address crops which are indigenous, local, planet and climate friendly. ▪ Support and engage with Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and other value chain actors to be able to better handle this diversity of food and ensure delivery in terms of quantity and quality.
  2. Policy changes to promote sustainable farming practices and transform food systems. o Recognize the potential of school food procurement as an entry point for local food systems transformation at policy level and promote policy coherency, including among nutrition, environmental, agriculture, and public procurement. o Include climate and other environmental and social considerations in policies, recommendations and procurement rules guiding school meals provisioning at national, regional, and local levels.

Ethiopia: Children are accessing Quality Safe and Incluive education thanks to School meals Programme

(Adopted from SMC GPE funded Save the Children implemented programme in Ethiopia)

Ongoing drought in some regions of Ethiopia, compounded by recent conflict in the north, have had devastating impact on livelihoods. School feeding has helped ease the challenges of food insecurity on families and kept children in school amid crises.

A US$10 million GPE grant was implemented by Save the Children in partnership with the Ministry of Education from 2022 to 2023, providing children in conflict and those in drought-affected regions with equitable access to quality, safe and inclusive pre-primary and primary education.

The program built on the successes of a previous GPE grant of $20 million for 2020-2022. School meals was the core intervention of both programs, which also focused on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), menstrual health, increased community/parental awareness on children’s enrolment in education, and system strengthening.

Thanks to GPE funding, more than 235,000 children in 562 rural schools benefited from school meals and other education-related interventions.

 

https://schoolmealscoalition.org/haiti-innovative-financing-schoolmeals/

Haiti: The government embraces Innovative financing to Scale up School Meals

Haiti is facing multi-faceted development challenges. The country is ranks nks 168 out of 187 on the 2014 Human Development Index (UNDP 2015). 50 percent of children do not attend school(World Bank 2013), 30% of the population is considered food insecure(World Food Programme 2015), despite these challenges the government of Haiti and School meals coalition partners have invested in innovative schools meals programme.

 

(According to SMC)Through a financing package with Haiti’s National Fund for Education and in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Global Partnership for Education’s Multiplier Fund, the Government of Haiti will expand its school meals coverage by 20 percent to reach 1.5 million children in pre and primary schools.

The National Fund for Education, established by the government, has a component dedicated to school feeding and is financed through transfers from the diaspora and the treasury. At the School Meals Coalition First Global Summit in Paris, Haiti’s Minister of Education Nesmy Manigat announced the new mechanism, which has since attracted funding from the USA’s McGovern Dole Program and Qatar. “It’s very innovative and a major advancement for developing countries. The Multiplier Fund can be used as a grant to raise funds and can also be used to reduce interest rates on concessional loans for countries to get additional funding for school meals,” he told the participants at the Summit.

 

In other initiatives to improve quality of learning, Haiti has set up a “Learning Compensation programme” for students to catch up on lost learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and political instability that kept many children out of school. Minister Manigat said the government is also experimenting with school gardens to impart knowledge about food production and nutrition.

“This initiative has an educational value that will shape students’ behaviour, relationship with food and positively impact their health. It’s a big issue for us!”

Plans are underway to set up a technical agricultural college to act as economic hubs for continuity of learning to promote production of food varieties needed to diversify school menus. Minister Manigat said through these initiatives, young people will gain the capacity to produce what schools will buy for the national school meals program.

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