Beyond the Meal: The Women Who Power School Feeding Worldwide

Beyond the Meal: The Women Who Power School Feeding Worldwide

IN RECOGNITION OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2026

By Jintana Malisueng White, GCNF Consultant & Leland International Hunger Fellow

Every school day, millions of women make it possible for a child to receive a meal at school. They grow the food, cook the meals, manage supply chains, and uphold hygiene standards for school meal programs around the world- in many instances, on a volunteer basis. From the community kitchens of Botswana to the procurement cooperatives of Brazil, women are the backbone of one of the world’s most impactful public investments in children. Globally, 91% of school meal programs report that at least half their cooks and caterers are women, yet one in four programs reports that none of them receive any payment.

This International Women’s Day, it is worth pausing to see them – not only as a workforce, but also professionals who deserve recognition and a seat at the table.

School meals powered by women. Images from Honduras (top left), Ghana (top right), Kyrgyzstan (bottom left), and Benin (bottom right)
A Workforce That Spans the Globe

Women are at the center of the school feeding workforce,  and this holds across very different national contexts. In the United States, 94% of the estimated 339,000 school foodservice workers are women, compared to 42% of the general workforce. In South Africa, 75 to 99% of the 61,392 workers delivering meals to 9.6 million learners under the National School Nutrition Programme are women. The GCNF 2024 Global Survey of School Meal Programs, drawing on data from over 160 countries, further found that 30% of programs reported an all-female cooking workforce.

The ways programs recognize and invest in women differ by context, through leadership roles in Bangladesh, vocational training in Syria, cooperative farming in Burundi, and paid cook positions in Cambodia, yet in each case women remain the primary labor force keeping school meals running.

This International Women’s Day, it is worth pausing to see them – not only as a workforce, but also professionals who deserve recognition and a seat at the table.

From Volunteerism to Profession: Botswana’s Journey

Botswana offers a compelling example of how women’s labor in school feeding can evolve from informal care work into a recognized profession. When the program launched in 1966, women cooked meals as volunteers, shouldering community responsibility. Today, over 10,000 are permanent, pensionable employees and more than 29,000 are contracted suppliers. In sorghum hand-stamping alone, 3,002 out of 3,003 workers are women. The country is now developing vocational certification in nutrition management and food safety, a trajectory Vanity Mafule, Assistant Director Ministry of Local Government and Traditional Affair of Botswana presented at a recent IFPRI and GCNF webinar on the school feeding labor force.

Procurement as an Equity Tool

Beyond the kitchen, women are also reshaping how school food is sourced. In Brazil, the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) requires that at least 30% of school meal funding go to family farms, a mandate established by Law 11.947/2009, which also requires that at least 50% of individual family farm purchases be registered in a woman’s name. A 2023 update extended this priority to women-led producer groups. In Burundi and Cambodia, women have organized into agricultural cooperatives to meet the volume and consistency demands of school procurement, transforming from subsistence producers into formal government suppliers.

Cambodia, school meal cook
The Recognition Gap 

Despite their numbers and the critical nature of their work, many women in school feeding remain in informal or temporary arrangements. In South Africa, the Labour Research Service has documented how the country’s 61,000 food handlers, all of whom are women, operate as “volunteers” under two-year public works contracts, earning a monthly stipend approximately 35% below the national minimum wage, with limited access to benefits and no formal job security. Botswana reflects a similar dynamic, where advocates are calling for greater job security beyond the current one-year contract arrangements.

These cases are not isolated. The 2024 GCNF Global Survey estimates at least 2.2 million cooks and caterers working in school meal programs worldwide, yet one in four programs reports that none of them receive any payment. The labor that sustains school feeding is often treated as informal care work rather than skilled employment, leading to this work being overlooked in formal labor frameworks.

A Call for Recognition

School meal programs served more than 407 million children in the 2022 school year in the 142 countries responding to the latest Global Survey. The women who make that possible; cooks, food handlers, cooperative farmers, program managers are not a footnote to this achievement. They are its foundation.

Recognizing these women means more than acknowledgment. It means standardized wages, social protection, vocational credentials, and a voice in program design. It means procurement systems that see women-led producers as partners. And it means investing in data so that the women critical to every school meal are counted and heard.

When we recognize the woman behind the meal, we strengthen the entire system that depends on her.

About the Author

Jintana is a GCNF Consultant, and a recipient of the Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellowship 2025 – 2027. 

She is a humanitarian and development professional specializing in poverty, social protection, and food security for vulnerable and conflict-affected communities. She supports GCNF’s policy, partnerships, and advocacy for child nutrition globally. Jintana holds an MA in Poverty and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, in the UK. 

Sources

  1. Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF). 2022. School Meal Programs Around the World: Results from the 2021 Global Survey of School Meal Programs. Accessed at survey.gcnf.org/2021-global-survey. 
  2. Congressional Research Service. (2022). The school foodservice workforce: Characteristics and labor market outcomes(CRS Report R47199). https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47199
  3. Labour Research Service. (2022–2025). National School Nutrition Programme: Volunteer Food Handler Series. lrs.org.za.
  4. Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF). 2024. School Meal Programs Around the World: Results from the 2024 Global Survey of School Meal Programs. Accessed at https://gcnf.org/global-reports/.
  5. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). (n.d.). Evidence-informed impact: Unpacking the untapped potential of the school feeding labor force [Event]. IFPRI. https://www.ifpri.org/event/evidence-informed-impact-unpacking-the-untapped-potential-of-the-school-feeding-labor-force/
  6. Brazil, Law No. 11.947/2009 on the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) Family Agriculture Procurement Mandate. (2009).

 

GCNF December 2025 Newsletter

Events and Activities

This newsletter edition brings a look at GCNF’s recent work—at home and around the world. This newsletter edition brings a look at GCNF’s recent work – at home and around the world. You will find highlights from our global and local engagements, an official announcement on the 2026 Global Child Nutrition Forum and key projects.

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Collective Effort for a Brighter Future: Indonesia’s Journey Toward Free Nutritious Meals

Collective Effort for a Brighter Future: Indonesia’s Journey Toward Free Nutritious Meals

Blog by: Arfisha Muwahidah, GCNF Intern, MSPH Student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 

“My students could not bring meals to school because they only have one time to eat in a day”, shared a teacher from a junior high school in Bandung City, West Java—the heart of Indonesia’s most populated province.

This simple statement reveals a complex truth: solving nutrition and health challenges requires more than one solution. It requires multiple, coordinated, and thoughtfully designed interventions working in partnership across sectors. It takes a village, as they say. This is the story of how Indonesia came to understand that lesson —and what they did about it.

The data shows how serious the problem is. According to the GENIUS program—a prior school feeding program run by Indonesia’s National Food Agency (Bapanas)—47.1 percent of school-aged children did not eat or rarely ate breakfast. 

The 2022 Indonesian student health survey found that about 76.78 percent of students consumed fewer than the recommended five portions of fruits and vegetables per day. More than half of students, 54.41 percent, consumed fast food at least once in the past seven days, and 62.34 percent of students regularly consumed sugary carbonated beverages. These eating habits  contribute to poor diet quality and have consequences for health and learning outcomes.

Ciparay 1 Public Primary School

Without action, these eating habits will get worse and affect students’ health and nutrition. Poor nutrition during childhood and adolescence  leads to stunted growth, weaker immune systems, and lower capacity to learn. For adolescent girls, the stakes are even higher—poor nutrition now can lead to poor maternal and child health later. 

Indonesia’s government is taking this seriously, recognizing treating child nutrition as a national priority. Childhood malnutrition today means reduced economic productivity tomorrow. The Human Capital Index is below the targets, and stunting prevalence and maternal mortality rate remain high. However, the problem is not just health nutrition—it’s education, it’s economics, it’s social protection. All these sectors must work together to find lasting solutions.

Indonesia’s school meal program, Makan Bergizi Gratis or MBG (Free Nutritious Meal), was officially launched on January 6, 2025 in 26 provinces with about 600 students receiving meals on day one. Since then, it has grown quickly. By early November 2025, the program had reached more than 41.2 million people—which is about 50 percent of the goal of 82.9 million. Beneficiaries include school students, early childhood, pregnant and breastfeeding women.

MBG was designed as a national strategy to achieve health and nutrition gains, better education, economic benefits, and social protection—all at the same time. In pilot areas, the program showed clear improvement in eating patterns. Students who used to buy packaged snacks now have fresh, healthy meals with vegetables and proteins. More importantly, they’re learning what good nutrition looks like. Children who used to eat rice with noodles—both carbohydrates—now bring meals with balanced nutrients that they’ve learned about every day at school. Moreover, teachers have noticed significant changes. Students attend school more regularly, are more attentive in class, and the learning environment is better.

State Junior Secondary School 1 Leuwimunding

Benefits of the program extend far beyond schools. MBG has supported the community by creating approximately 600,000 jobs, encompassing workers in kitchens and raw material suppliers. The vegetables from local farmers are purchased regularly, helping them have stable prices and steady income. Meanwhile, families experience financial relief as burdensome food expenses are now covered.

As the program scaled up, maintaining food safety became a critical focus. Rapid expansion led to some food poisoning incidents, prompting the government to act quickly. The government took corrective actions by closing more than 50 kitchens that were identified as causing food poisoning and health problems while waiting for laboratory tests from BPOM (Indonesia’s National Agency of Drug and Food Control). The government introduced stricter verification processes and required Hygiene and Sanitation Eligibility Certificates (SLHS) for all service units, demonstrating their commitment to quality assurance and food safety standards.

The government established nutrition standards that are tailored to different age groups, ensuring meals provide 20 to 35 percent of dietary needs, with specific amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. MBG follows the “Isi Piringku” (My Plate) guidelines, which means balanced nutrition with whole foods in the right proportions. The government has also developed food safety protocols that cover the entire supply chain from receiving ingredients to storage to cooking to serving. The “5 Keys of Food Safety” framework is clear: use clean water, select safe raw materials and cook properly, separate raw from cooked food, maintain safe temperatures, and practice handwashing.

Cooking Team - Ciparay Leuwimunding 1 Nutrition Service Unit (SPPG)

These guidelines and standards provide the foundation, but implementation requires continuous and systematic monitoring, regular inspections, and continuous capacity building through a clear regulation. To make MBG work well at scale, Indonesia could draw lessons from  Brazil’s National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA), which brings together representatives from different government agencies and civil society organizations to oversee the  Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE, the national school feeding program). This collaborative council ensures that food safety supervision, program delivery, and policy decisions are coordinated across sectors rather than managed by a single ministry. The success of Brazil’s sustained large-scale school feeding program shows what strong cross-sector collaboration can achieve. 

Indonesia’s Free Nutritious Meal Program demonstrates what can happen when every sector plays its part—education provides the space, health ensures safety, agriculture supplies the food, and communities lend their hands. Together, they are shaping a brighter future for millions of children.

Photo Source: Ciparay Leuwimunding 1 

Home Grown School Feeding: How Zambia is Turning the Page

Students harvesting hydroponic grown vegetables

The 2026 Global Child Nutrition Forum will be hosted in Lusaka, Zambia — a country that’s turning the page in home-grown school feeding. Zambia’s program is not only ensuring that children start each day nourished and ready to learn, but it’s also empowering local farmers, uplifting women, and preserving the nation’s agricultural heritage. With government support and a growing emphasis on nutrient-rich indigenous crops, Zambia stands as a model for how school meal programs can drive both better nutrition and more resilient food systems. In many low-income countries, too many children still begin their school day on an empty stomach – a child’s quadruple threat to learning, growth, health, and long-term opportunity. It is not just a missed meal; it is a missed chance for a better future.

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Civil Society Calls for Urgent Action to Ensure Every Child Receives a Healthy School Meal by 2030

CSO Network for School Meals

GCNF is proud to support World Vision International, the School Meals Coalition’s (SMC) Civil Society Organization (CSO) lead, in amplifying the role of civil society in advancing school meal programs. As a steering committee member of the SMC CSO Network, we are pleased to share below the joint statement and accompanying press release, issued ahead of the 2nd Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition.

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GCNF Newsletter August 2025

GCNF Newsletter August 2025

GCNF is proud to support the School Meals Coalition’s Civil Society Organization (CSO) lead, World Vision International, in conducting a survey of CSO contributions to school meal programs.

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