By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Mar 13 2025 (IPS-Partners)

Millions of children worldwide are going hungry, and we all know that hungry children cannot learn. On International School Meals Day, we are calling on donors to significantly scale-up funding for school feeding to ensure every child can go to school, every child can access at least one nutritious meal a day, and every child can concentrate, develop and achieve.

Our investment in school meals saves lives through education in emergencies. It also offers significant economic returns that pave the way for strong economies and increased global security. In fact, according to the World Food Programme (WFP) State of School Feeding Worldwide Report, every dollar invested in school meals has a $9 return. These returns cut across numerous sectors, including agriculture, education, health and nutrition, and social protection.

The benefits for learners are significant. According to WFP: “Every day, over 100 million children in low- and lower-middle-income countries are going hungry. Millions go to school on an empty stomach – hunger affects their concentration and ability to learn. There are also millions – particularly girls – who simply do not go to school because their families need them to help in the fields or perform domestic duties. In conflict-affected countries, children are twice as likely to be out of school than their peers in stable countries – 2.5 times more likely, in the case of girls.”

Investing in healthy school meals – especially in crisis contexts – is an investment in local economies and an investment in local human capital. It’s an investment in the future engineers, teachers and technicians that will drive positive change to end repeated cycles of hunger, displacement and poverty.

Working together with partners, ECW provides significant investments each year in school feeding. The most recent analysis indicates that ECW investments for quality school feeding interventions active in 2023 reached over 300,000 children across nine countries.

In Ethiopia, ECW investments reached around 100,000 children through school feeding programmes. Recognizing that poverty was a crucial factor keeping children out of school, the programme involved families and community members to manage the programme and provide in-kind contributions like building kitchen houses or providing firewood to cook the hot meals.

In Cameroon and Haiti, ECW funding delivered by WFP is focused on local procurement from smallholder farmers. This not only ensures nutritious meals for young learners, but also strengthens the local food system and local economy.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over 39,000 students in 69 schools have received nutritious meals through an ECW-funded programme delivered by UNICEF.

The needs are skyrocketing. With ongoing conflicts in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan creating ripple effects across Africa – and indeed across the globe – we must ensure that school meals in education investments remain at the top of the international humanitarian funding agenda.

ECW connects across various sectors to accelerate the collective impact of humanitarian funding. Together, we can keep hope alive for the 234 million crisis-impacted children that urgently need our support.

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