School meals for children around the world
The World Food Programme (WFP) promotes school meals worldwide. In 2022, its expert assistance reached 107 million schoolchildren. The global School Meals Coalition, led by Finland, France and Brazil, supports the WFP’s efforts.
The WFP focuses on building school meal programmes in low-income countries in particular. In 2022, it also distributed meals and snacks and provided direct financial support to more than 20 million schoolchildren in 59 countries.
To support school meals, governments established the global School Meals Coalition in 2021, which now includes nearly 100 member countries and more than a hundred other partners. The coalition’s goal is to ensure that all schoolchildren worldwide have access to healthy and nutritious school meals by 2030.
Finland’s Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Ville Tavio, serves as an ambassador for the School Meals Coalition.
Background
According to WFP, at the beginning of 2022, there were 153 million children and young people worldwide who did not receive enough nutritious and healthy food daily.
School meals encourage families to send their children to school. A lunch or snack provided at school reduces the expenses of vulnerable households by about 10 per cent. It also delays their daughters’ marriages, positively impacting education levels, health and gender equality.
Impact of Finland's development cooperation
Finland has supported global school meals initiatives since 2021. In 2023, Finland allocated EUR 3 million in funding to WFP’s school meal programmes and activities.