Financing School Feeding
The World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger launches today the second publication of the Good Practices Series, showing examples of successful financing tools for School Feeding Programmes in different countries with distinct contexts.
The increase in the attendance and school enrolment; the improvement in students‘ nutrition, health and well-being; the direct and indirect impacts in the families as a whole, and even the encouragement to the human capital development and to local economies, are some examples of the multiple benefits of school feeding. They represent key levers for governments to boost national investments.
One of the challenges of this process is to establish arrangements that will assure the necessary funding, while also promoting the sustainability of programmes. This publication highlights examples of financing models from national school feeding programmes using different policy frameworks and partnership arrangements.
Cambodia and Nigeria, for example, display how national programmes can gain new momentum – and corresponding funds – in contexts where governments decide to expand investment in social protection programmes.
Another key lever for national programmes in several countries is the adoption of school feeding laws by national parliaments, in addition to policy frameworks developed by executive branches of governments. In Guatemala, the school feeding law is very ambitious in its provisions about financing, including the amount allocated for the programme per student per day, as well as the source of this revenue within state budget. Other than this ring-fenced budget, the law foresees the possibility of revising allocations every two years, to provide for changes in the implementing environment of the programme.
The cases of Sri Lanka and Tunisia attest that national concerns over child nutrition may be the main drivers for increased investment in national school feeding programmes, whether they are to curb micronutrient deficiencies or the rising challenge of child obesity and overweight.
Jordan and Mozambique are examples of countries that rely on support from development partners to finance their programmes, either because of major economic crises that may affect established programmes, or as a means to kick-start a new national initiative.
The Good Practices Series is a collection of thematic publications of the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger aiming to provide good examples of policies, actions and experiences related to school feeding from various countries.
Click here to download the publication in English
