School Meals Accelerator

School meals are having a moment of global importance. In just five years, 80 million more children have gained access to school meals – bringing the total to 466 million worldwide. The School Meals Coalition has driven this momentum, uniting a network of countries and partners to make school meals a strategic investment in children, food systems, and national development. 

The School Meals Accelerator was created as the fifth initiative of the Coalition to build on this success and help countries turn ambition into real impact. It is specifically built to help low- and lower-middle-income countries address the barriers they are facing to expand their school meals programmes in a sustainable way. While progress has been made, it is uneven – coverage is just 27% in low-income countries, compared to 80% in high-income countries. 

We want to help change that. The Accelerator’s vision is a world where every country can feed its own school children in ways that are nutritious and healthy, rooted in their own soils, cultures, and systems, and where minimal outside support is needed to sustain programmes.

Delivering school meals at scale is complex. Countries must navigate challenges that cut across education, health, agriculture, social protection, and food systems, which are often difficult to align due to different logics and incentives. Ensuring all children receive healthy and nutritious school meals every day requires bringing together ministries, partners, financing and evidence around a shared vision that translates into effective and consistent implementation.

Given this complexity, the Accelerator’s approach is about systems strengthening. Drawing on decades of experience and evidence in school meals and economic development, blended with research and expertise on systems thinking, adaptive leadership, and organizational learning, the Accelerator accompanies countries on their scale up journey by combining collaborative, systems-based ways of working with high-quality technical expertise, partnerships, and catalytic resources to unlock sustainable, system-wide progress. 

The Accelerator's distinctive contribution is not only the expertise it helps mobilize, but the way it works with governments and partners to unlock progress together. Alongside a network of partners, especially the other four initiatives of the School Meals Coalition and other aligned stakeholders, we aim to advance the collective impact in the countries we support. 

We work with and through partners to bring the following capabilities, expertise, and resources:

• Evidence, learning, and accountability: support to design and implement monitoring and accountability systems; support for better evidence generation and evaluation
• Coordination and delivery models: multisectoral coordination, local procurement models, support to transition towards a food systems approach and regenerative agriculture, among others 

• Sustainable financing and ownership: support to develop robust, mission-oriented approaches to school meals and innovative domestic and international financing solutions

   

In addition to thematic technical expertise, we offer tools and practices that support systems strengthening and collective learning: 

• System diagnostics and sense making: to look beyond symptoms to patterns, incentives, relationships, assumptions, power, and context.
• Convening and partner scanning: to create spaces where actors who shape the system can strengthen relationships, think, learn, and work together differently. We deliberately invite unseen or unheard actors in, increasing diversity.
• Trust-based relationship development: to align around shared purpose, surface different perspectives, and generate additional value.
• Capacity building and leadership development: to support individual development and cultivate systemic leadership.

We are selective in who we work with. To ensure our support is effective we only work with countries that have demonstrated commitment and have a stable context that allows sustained engagement. We prioritize partners who are aligned with our approach and are open to collaboration, learning, and adaptation to drive long-term impact. On any given year, the Accelerator will work with up to 8 countries at a time, mobilizing a growing network of partners to support them. 

We work with low- and lower-middle-income countries to identify and address the barriers they are facing to expand their school meals programmes in a sustainable way. We begin with diagnosis rather than predetermined solutions, working with governments and partners to align around shared priorities, strengthen collaboration, and test practical ways forward. We bring catalytic resources, global partnerships, ongoing learning, and a systemic leadership approach to support progress over time.

By working with us, governments may expect to see: 

• Stronger alignment across ministries, partners and stakeholders around national priorities
• Sustainable progress on key school meals ambitions through improved coordination and collective action
• Greater ability to address challenges that no single ministry or organization can solve alone
• Increased access to expertise, partnerships and catalytic resources aligned to country priorities
• Stronger national capacity to sustain and adapt programmes over time 
• Improved quality, reach, and sustainability of school meals programmes
• Increased capacity to learn, adapt, and respond to emerging challenges and opportunities