Reducing Hunger and Improving Focus: School Meal Programs at the Intersection of Nutrition and Education

Reducing Hunger and Improving Focus: School Meal Programs at the Intersection of Nutrition and Education

 

Reflecting on Afshan Khan‘s remarks from the 2024 Global Child Nutrition Forum 

Blog by Alissa Rutkowski, GCNF Communications Coordinator in collaboration with the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

International Day of Education, celebrated annually on January 24, emphasizes the pivotal role of education in building equitable, sustainable futures for all. Around the world, school meal programs and nutrition-focused interventions amplify educational outcomes while advancing sustainable development goals. Japan’s Shokuiku (“food and nutrition education”) initiative is one compelling example of how integrating nutrition education into school meal programs can strengthen education systems and equip children with lifelong healthy habits.

At the 2024 Global Child Nutrition Forum in Osaka, Japan, 408 participants from over 82 countries gathered for four-days of learning, collaboration, and advocacy centered around the theme “School Meal Programs in an Era of Food Systems Transformation“. Afshan Khan, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, delivered remarks testifying to the multi-sectoral benefits and transformative power of investing in school meals. The following are her remarks as presented at the Forum on December 10th, 2024: 

Afshan Khan delivers remarks at the 2024 Global Child Nutrition Foundation

“Distinguished colleagues and partners,

It is an honor to address you today at the Global Child Nutrition Forum as we work towards a shared vision of a healthy, nutritious future for all children.

As Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, 

I represent a coalition of civil society, donors, the private sector, UN agencies, and 66 countries united in the fight against malnutrition in all its forms, especially among children.

Access to nutritious diets in early life lays the foundation for children to thrive in health, learning, and development. Yet, we have a long way to go to give all children the healthy start that they need:

  • 148 million children are stunted
  • Over half of preschool-aged children have micronutrient deficiencies
  • And since 1990, childhood and adolescent obesity has quadrupled

 

Good nutrition is essential in a child’s early years, but it doesn’t stop there. School-aged and adolescent children have critical nutritional needs too. Sadly, unhealthy diets, often driven by aggressive marketing, are moving children away from diverse, or traditional diets.

School meal programs can provide an effective counterbalance. Globally, they reach 41% of primary school children. Regular school meals can:

  • Build on early investments in nutrition.
  • Reduce hunger and improve focus in classrooms.
  • Enhance learning outcomes and advance gender equality.
  • Increase school attendance by 9%, with even greater impacts for girls.

When combined with other interventions like deworming and micronutrient supplementation, school meals can significantly enhance children’s health and development.

Clearly, more than a way to fill stomachs, nutritious school meals can foster lifelong healthy habits, dietary diversity and help to mitigate risks of obesity.

Given that school meals account for 70 percent of publicly procured food (globally) they present a real opportunity to promote local sourcing and climate-smart agriculture.

They are also an effective intervention during and after shocks and emergencies, helping keep children nourished and in school through crisis. An important consideration when half the world’s extreme poor now live in conflict and fragile states.

Here in Japan the championing of Shokuiku (‘food and nutrition education’) is an example for the world to follow. It incorporates health, nutrition education, social protection and community engagement to feed and educate children about the benefits and preparation of locally sourced, traditional nutritious meals.

Children at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan help prepare and serve food during lunch

School meals are expanding in most regions, with governments increasingly recognising the importance of formalising school meal programmes into institutional policy and connecting them with other health and nutrition initiatives and allocating domestic budgets. Investments in children’s nutrition has economic future economic gains for the whole country.

In Cambodia for example, the Home-Grown School Feeding Program has reduced food insecurity in vulnerable communities and promoted gender equality by creating income opportunities for women. Energy-efficient stoves and locally sourced foods have contributed to environmental sustainability.

Rwanda announced in 2022 that school meals coverage increased from 660,000 to 3.8 million students, and the national budget dedicated to school meals increased from $33 million to $74 million. And in Benin, the country has committed to moving towards universal school meals coverage with a national budget increase from $79 million to $240 million over the next five years.

But there is still a great deal of work to do to reach all, especially vulnerable communities and low income countries. Reaching children in fragile and conflict affected states remains a significant challenge, but one that needs urgent attention.

It is good to see the trend towards national sustainability. India is feeding some 90 million children daily and Brazil some 40 million children entirely from domestic finance. But lower income countries need more international support to match domestic financing.

Moving forward it will be important to expand school meal coverage but also to focus on healthy school environments. This includes access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, it includes strict policies that stop the sale of unhealthy foods on school grounds, promote more physical activity in the school day, nutrition education and regular health check-ups for children all help to get the best outcomes quickly.

This week’s event comes at an important time with an increased focus on nutrition stemming from COP28’s Declarations through the Summit of the Future and the launch of the new G20 Alliance on Hunger and Poverty. 2025 will be a big year for nutrition with the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris, the renewal of the WHA Nutrition Targets, UNFSS+4, the SUN Global Gathering and COP30 – all of which offer nation states and national stakeholders as well as the global community opportunities to accelerate cross-sector action for better nutrition outcomes for children, women and their families and communities.

As the world grapples with the new reality of shrinking donor funding, high debt levels, rising climate change and geopolitical challenges we will need a joined-up, systems approach that links nutrition into climate, food systems, health and education. At SUN we are actively supporting the preparations of Nutrition for Growth building on the tremendous success of the Tokyo Summit hosted by Japan. The commitments that many of your governments make will be the key to taking forward actions to build the human capital that is needed for the next generation of leaders. You will hear more about the Summit from Brieuc Pont in a moment.

Global networks such as the Global Child Nutrition Foundation play an important role by helping to build bridges across sectors, stakeholder groups, views and traditions, helping us to learn from each other and collaborate better for effective local nutrition solutions.

I want to also specifically thank the sponsors of this event (Rockefeller, CIFF, Ajinomoto, Catholic Relief Services, Food 4 Education, the foundation for Fresh Produce, Nakanishi and World Vision) for their commitment and leadership in this important area of nutrition. And I must also acknowledge the exemplary work of the School Meals Coalition co-chaired by Brazil, Finland and France working together to ensure that every child receives a healthy and nutritious daily meal in school by 2030.

Investment in nutrition is good value for money, a $1 investment can have a $23 return. And, the benefits far outweigh the costs of no action ($41 trillion over ten years according to the World Bank). Including school meals as part of a life-cycle approach that supports good nutrition at every stage of life—from breastfeeding and nutritious first foods for babies, to healthy school diets and vitamins for adolescents, especially girls—can help every child reach their full potential and build healthier, more productive societies.

I wish you an enjoyable and informative event. Thank you.”

Since 2010, the SUN Movement has inspired a new way of working collaboratively to end malnutrition, in all its forms.  SUN works with countries across Southern and South-eastern Asia to tackle persistent malnutrition challenges.  In Sri Lanka, the success of the National School Meals Programme demonstrates the power of multiple sectors, stakeholders and communities working together.  Learn more about this work here. 

Photo credit Kenichiro Takamatsu, property of the Global Child Nutrition Foundation



Seeing the Value of School Food Workers and Their Labor

Seeing the Value of School Food Workers and Their Labor

Blog by Jennifer E. Gaddis,  Associate Professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Sarah A. Robert, comparative and international education and gender policy expert and an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo (SUNY)

State-sponsored school meal programs not only improve children’s health and well-being, but also promote educational access by helping to attract and keep the most vulnerable populations in school. These programs can also play a vital role in catalyzing broader food system transformations that increase local agro-biodiversity, strengthen food sovereignty, and shift power away from multinational corporations to the communities where children are fed. All of this depends, however, on the paid and unpaid labor of a predominantly female workforce that is too often overlooked in policy discussions, research, and data sharing about school meals around the world.

As the 2024 Global Child Nutrition Summit nears, we encourage participants and other school food stakeholders to “see” this labor and have intentional conversations about the importance of school food workers in an era of food systems transformation. Drawing from our new open-access book Transforming School Food Politics around the World (MIT Press 2024), and global survey data collected by the Global Child Nutrition Foundation, we offer a brief snapshot of gendered labor in school food programs, highlight both the visible and invisible nature of this labor, and suggest an agenda for future data collection and collaborative learning.

Gendered Labor in School Food Programs around the World

Women disproportionately undertake the labor of feeding children at school, reflecting broader societal norms around gender and care work. According to the 2021 Global Survey of School Meal Program database, 82% of programs globally reported that at least three quarters of cooks and caterers are women (GCNF 2022). This database covers 139 countries–roughly 81% of the world’s population–however, only 62% of these countries (86 countries) provided an estimate of the number of people employed in their school meal programs.

So what do we currently know? The 86 countries that provided employment estimates report a total of 3.7 million paid personnel, most of whom worked as cooks/food preparers, and servers. We also know that about 37% of school meal programs in the database emphasize creating jobs or income-generating opportunities for women, resulting in roughly 1,668 jobs created for every 100,000 children fed (WFP 2022). This explicit emphasis on creating jobs or income-generation opportunities for women is more common within low-income and middle-income countries’ school meal programs.

“Seeing” Visible and Invisible Labor

One thing the data doesn’t tell us much about is the contributions of school food workers beyond the core task of feeding children. Yet, as we argue in Transforming School Food Politics around the World, there are both visible and invisible forms of labor that these workers perform. The most visible aspects of their labor involve culinary work (preparing the food children eat), service work, and the maintenance of physical spaces like kitchens and cafeterias. This work may also include menu planning, attending to children’s dietary needs or restrictions, soliciting payment for meals, or verifying eligibility for free meals. The invisible labor, which is rarely (if ever) detailed in job descriptions, but nevertheless expected of many school food workers around the world largely involves what we refer to as “care work.” This includes direct care of students’ physical, emotional, and social needs (e.g., fostering social connections), as well as the care for the natural environment, and the welfare of workers across the school food chain who can be supported through values-aligned purchasing.

For example, in Canada, a country that did not have a national school food policy until June 2024, both the visible and invisible labor of school feeding is performed by paid workers, community volunteers, and adults (mostly mothers) in the home. As one of the contributors to our volume recently wrote, the lack of uniform state-sponsored feeding adds to both the (visible) physical and (invisible) mental labor that women perform in the home. In another chapter, Canadian contributors highlight the invisible labor of teachers (another women-dominated occupation) who use their own time and financial resources to address food security and food justice issues that impact their students.

A Napuruna mother prepares sardines, rice, and plantains for a school meal. Students harvested the plantains.
Credit: Emmanuelle Ricaud Oneto.

Other chapter contributors highlight the (gendered) visible and invisible labor in their school meal programs. In two Native communities in the Peruvian Amazon, local mothers take turns preparing meals using ingredients distributed through Peru’s national program and, at times, incorporate local fish or produce that students contribute. Their labor to produce school meals is unpaid, yet vital to the health and well-being of children and youth in their communities.

We know from the GCNF’s data that this type of unpaid labor is not an isolated instance. 32% of programs globally reported in the 2021 survey that less than half of their cooks/caterers received payment for their work. Yet two chapters focused on the Brazilian states of Ceará and Paraná show us that women as agroecologists, as farmers, and as land owners become visible, empowered when procurement contracts prioritize their knowledge and contributions to school meals.

Research and Co-learning about Labor in School Food Programs

As school meal programs grow and change, we see an important role for the 2024 GCNF Forum and the United Nations-backed School Meals Coalition to share best practices, experiences, information, and technical support for creating high quality employment, which recognizes the value of both visible and invisible labor in school food programs around the world.

So how might we do this? In the United States, for example, the federal government recently allocated $1.5 million to fund a 3-year study of its school food workforce. We are eager to learn about similar efforts and hope to connect with other researchers interested in this topic. Robust data collection on the school food workforce within other country-specific contexts would help policymakers and practitioners better understand the current status of the global school food workforce and identify the most promising strategies for “gender-just transitions” within the broader context of food systems transformation (UN Women 2024, p. 91). We encourage other countries to fund research on the school food workforce and also see tremendous potential for organizations like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the GCNF that already conduct global surveys to include more detailed questions about the demographics, work structures and conditions, and impacts of school food workers. We also encourage thematic sessions focused on school food labor at global gatherings of school food stakeholders and the creation of a specific topical area “labor and workforce” in online platforms and databases that aggregate statistics and other research on school food programs.

About the authors:

Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an expert on school food politics and systems change. Dr. Gaddis is author of the award-winning book  The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools (University of California Press, 2019) and principal investigator of a $1.5 million USDA-funded study of the school food workforce. She is the co-editor with Sarah A. Robert of Transforming School Food Politics Around the World. Gaddis is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network and has written op-eds on school food politics for popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and The Guardian.

Sarah A. Robert is a comparative and international education and gender policy expert and an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She is the author of Neoliberal Education Reform: Gendered Notions in Global and Local Contexts (Routledge, 2017), awarded the Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association. Robert co-edited with Jennifer E. Gaddis Transforming School Food Politics Around the World (MIT Press, 2024). She also edited “Intersectionality and education work during COVID-19 transitions” for Gender, Work, and Organizations (2023); Neoliberalism, Gender, and Education Reform (Routledge, 2018); and the award winning, School Food Politics (P. Lang, 2011).

References

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

Gaddis, J. E., & Robert, S. A., Eds. (2024). Transforming school food politics around the world. MIT Press.

Staab, S., Williams, L., Tabbush, C., & Turquet, L. 2024. Leveraging school feeding programmes for gender-just transitions. In “Harnessing social protection for gender equality, resilience and transformation,” Box 3.4, p. 91. World Survey on the Role of Women in Development. New York: UN-Women.

World Food Programme (WFP). 2022. State of School Feeding Worldwide.