Led by the Department of Agriculture, the United States is joining a global coalition focused on improving the nutrition, health, and education of children. The coalition, called “School Meals: Nutrition, Health and Education for Every Child,” will officially launch at the United Nations’ Food Systems Summit in September.
U.N. member states lead the coalition with support from the U.N.'s World Food Program. The coalition's goal is to promote, strengthen, and expand school feeding programs across the globe to make nutritious meals available for all children by 2030.
The coalition will advocate for multisector coordination, stable funding sources and ongoing research to improve program quality and efficiency.
Specifically, the coalition aims to ensure that, by 2022, all countries restore school meals programs for the 370 million children who lost access during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as reaching 73 million additional children living in extreme poverty and hunger who were not receiving school meals pre-pandemic.