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Working to ensure governments and their partners have the resources, tools, and connections they need to increase coverage of high-quality school meal programs that contribute to national educational, agricultural, economic, social protection, and health and nutrition goals.

Why school meals?

Global Child Nutrition Foundation believes school feeding programs are a powerful and integrated way to encourage children to attend school, support their learning, and prepare them for success.

Why locally sourced?

Working with local farmers and making use of perishable foods such as fruits and vegetables, schools can provide daily meals to more children while increasing local economic returns.

We are GCNF.

We are a global network working together to ensure that hunger is not a barrier for learning for any child.

Join us!

The Global Survey of School Meal Programs collected data from over 150 countries

VOICES FROM THE NETWORK

News from the Network

Bar graph illustrating how Beef, porch, and Cheese have largest greenhouse gas emission

Climate-Smart School Meal Programs

Climate-Smart School Meal Programs by Melissa Pradhan, Survey Associate: Asia, The Pacific, & The Middle East The IPCC Reports have repeatedly called for alarms to
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school meal program in Tunisia

Eleven Years of International School Meals Day

Eleven Years of International School Meals Day Children in Scotland manages International School Meals Day (ISMD) and in this guest blog, Head of Engagement &
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school meals Nicaragua

How 5 GPE Partner Countries are Helping Students Attend Schools

Read how GPE is supporting Burundi, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nicaragua, Somalia, and Yemen to ensure students can learn in good conditions through school feeding programs.
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A farmer in Morogoro, Tanzania, shows the effects of drought on her maize crop. She is enrolled in a farmer field school to learn about improved, drought tolerant maize varieties, organized by Tanzanian seed company Tanseed International Limited, with support from CIMMYT's Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project.

Discussing AUDA-NEPAD Home-Grown School Feeding Guidelines

Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programs aim to provide school children with nutritious meals while also supporting local agriculture and economies. Since the program’s endorsement by the African Union Development Agency New Partnership for Africa's Development (AUDA-NEPAD) in 2003, the HGSF concept has continued to attract significant attention due to its potential to simultaneously meet various cross-sectoral objectives.
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Voices from the Network

School feeding goes beyond just feeding school children but rather it is a socio-economic policy issues - which calls for all countries to develop a national policy on school feeding.

Serufo Ntsabne

Botswana

With the experiences I've had and the exchanges with others, I am determined to make things happen in my country for school meals, which are a major investment.

Henri-Vital Eka

Republic of the Congo

Excellent networking opportunities. Wonderful support from organizers and support team. Learned a lot. Enthused to improve our own programme further to benefit the world’s children.

Faith Kumalo

South Africa

In one sentence, the overall management of the Global Child Nutrition Forum was excellent. The learning from the forum will help us to implement a school feeding programme more efficiently, effectively in Bangladesh

Bablu Kumar Saha

Bangladesh

OUR COMMITMENT

Powerful things happen when parents, educators, community organizers, local businesses, and government officials within a school system share a common vision for healthy children. Yes, a child’s prospects are changed but it is far more than that. Local farmers work with purpose knowing there’s a ready market for their goods. Jobs are created to distribute and produce food. Local economies grow stronger as children grow up to be healthy, productive citizens who can access and create opportunity. When systems work together in this manner, school nutrition programs are sustainable and scalable. Societies develop in which hunger is not a barrier to children’s learning and local economies thrive. Please join Global Child Nutrition Foundation in our mission to give every child a chance to learn and thrive.

Gene White
Co-Founder, Global Child Nutrition Foundation

Join Us

There is an immediate opportunity to reach 65 million school age children around the world who currently attend school but do not get enough to eat. 
Help us reach them by making a tax-deductible contribution to GCNF today.