ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

While the world is still facing multiple crises due to conflict, climate change, and rising food and fuel prices, governments worldwide are increasingly convinced that school meals are a powerful and cost-effective way of ensuring that vulnerable children get the food they need and have made school meals one of their priorities.

In 2022, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳supported governments to establish or expand national school feeding programmes, while also directly providing healthy meals, snacks or cash-based transfers in 59 countries to more than 20 million schoolchildren, often using locally-produced nutritious food.

Of the total number of children participating under a WFP-supported school feeding programme in 2022, 9.6 million received school meals in humanitarian emergency settings affected by conflict or natural disasters.

In 56 countries, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳supported the establishment or strengthening of home-grown school feeding programmes with the objectives of promoting dietary diversity, introducing fresh, local food into school meals, and linking national programmes to local smallholder production.

Throughout 2022, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳has supported the School Meals Coalition, by acting as its Secretariat. The country-led Coalition aims at ensuring that every child has the opportunity to receive a healthy, nutritious daily meal in school by 2030. By the end of 2022, 74 countries and 81 partners had joined the Coalition.

In 2022, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳also released the State of School Feeding, which demonstrated that political will is transforming into action: 418 million children now benefit from school meals worldwide, which is 30 million more than before the pandemic.