The city of Guarulhos received more than 600 nutritionists and school feeding counselors during the 1st National Meeting of School Feeding Councils (CAEs). The event, held last Friday (October 04), discussed practical and relevant aspects for the performance of counselors of CAEs and nutritionists.
The meeting was organized by the National Forum of School Feeding Councils. The opening table was attended by the Mayor of Guarulhos, Guti; the Secretary of Education of the City, Paulo Matheus; the Coordinator of the National Forum of School Feeding Councils, Marcelo Colonato; the Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence Against Hunger, Daniel Balaban; the Director of the Department of Food and Education Supplies (Dase), Jaime Daniel Pereira de Morais; the agent of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), representing the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE), Fátima Menezes; the Executive Director of the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), José Valdivino Moraes; and the Director of the Department of External Control of Education of the Federal Court of Audit (TCU), Rosana de Oliveira Machado Aragão.
For Mayor Guti, the public manager who sees the School Feeding Council as a partner has everything to gain and nothing to lose by making proper public policies and addressing the issues that need improvement as a primary goal. “We are very respectful about the CAE´s work, because we know that public policies need to be externally controlled not only by the official government bodies, but also by the people, the city dwellers, who can devote themselves to doing good and watching how we can move forward. School feeding is the gateway for children to develop better thinking and cognitive skills. The child may have the best teacher in the world, but it is necessary to be well fed in order to learn”, said the Mayor.
“Events like these seek to demonstrate the importance of social control for the effectiveness of national public policies. Brazil has one of the largest and the best school feeding programmes in the world and the success of the PNAE is due to the social control of the population for the effectiveness of the resources invested in the programme”, reinforces the Director of the WFP Centre of Excellence, Daniel Balaban.
During the event, the counselors had the opportunity to learn more about the PNAE and about the actions of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), regarding the monitoring of the resources invested in School Meals. The nutritionists participated in a different round of lectures, one of them about the use of Smallholder Farming products in school meals.
The event also featured a speech by chef Guga Rocha, currently one of the most prominent names of the new generation of Brazilian chefs. He talked about his experience in over forty countries and his studies on quilombola cuisine. Guga said that he had a great influence of the family in his career. His mother is a teacher and his grandmother was a cook in a public school. This is how he discovered his vocation to prepare tasty dishes. (With information from Guarulhos City Hall)