Women holding a large spoon

Country-led solutions, evidence, and breaking silos for global progress

How does the Coalition work?

The Coalition facilitates governments in making national commitments to scale up and improve quality of programmes, fostering collaboration through country-to-country exchanges and regional-level initiatives.  

The School Meals Coalition challenges traditional dynamics, recognizing each member’s value. With a committed Task Force and a Secretariat hosted by the UN World Food Programme, the Coalition promotes a new multilateralism grounded in country-led solutions, evidence, innovation and breaking silos for global progress.  

The Coalition's achievements
Children enjoying mealtime together at a table with plates of food

National Commitments

To date, over 110 countries have joined the School Meals Coalition. Out of these, over 60 countries have also submitted a national commitment, outlining how they aim to advance the Coalition's global goals at national level. Commitments may demonstrate how a country aims to introduce/prioritize the school meal programme or how the country will improve and scale its current programming or support other governments in doing so.

See National Commitments
Children eating at a table outside with food.

Partner efforts

The Coalition provides a network of partners and experts working on different aspects of school meal programmes and related health and nutrition services in schools.  

See Partner Efforts

Regional networks

Regional School Meals Coalition networks are established under leadership of countries and regional bodies, including the African Union Commission, ECOWAS, European Commission, Southern African Development Community and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), who organize exchange of best practices, evidence and knowledge in the regions. 

See Regional Network
A boy happily eating a banana in a classroom

Initiatives

The Coalition Initiatives are established based on needs, interests and identified challenges of the member states and partners. They are designed to support countries in the process of implementing and scaling-up quality national school meal programmes.  

See Initiatives