Publications and resources

Cambodia has implemented school feeding activities since the late 1990s, with staggered adoption across ten provinces and with varying components, including on-site meal provision and takehome rations ; and a home-grown school feeding (HGSF) program has been piloted since 2014.

Schools can be an effective platform for delivering key interventions. For example, school feeding programs (SFP) represent a school-based intervention that can efficiently target vulnerable populations, including children from rural areas, poorly performing schools, and regions presenting with high food insecurity.

This study looks at School meal provision in Cambodia and how it can generate important multisectoral benefits, along the sectors of education, health and nutrition, social protection, and local agriculture economy. While important variations in the extent of benefits were estimated across provinces, the school feeding program remains cost-beneficial in all regions of Cambodia. 

The school meals programme in Milan aims to provide each school day an educational meal (good, healthy and sustainable) to all children in the public schools in order to develop good food habits and sustainable lifestyles for their lifespan. Via the design of sustainable and healthy meals, the city strives to ensure concrete transformative changes towards a more sustainable urban food system. The goal of the service is to satisfy the needs of all its users, as well as to promote the food policy guidelines related to healthy and sustainable diets, among other stakeholders such as families, teachers, suppliers, and the broader Milanese community. Integral to this vision are food and nutritional security, food quality, the environment, health and safety in the workplace, transparency, and sustainability.

The objectives of this case study include presenting an introduction to the city profile, outlining the design and implementation of school feeding programmes, describing their monitoring and evaluation processes, and highlighting lessons learned, best practices, and challenges. 

This report, by Prof. Mariana Mazzucato & Sarah Doyle and colleagues at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, explores how school meals can serve as a lever for industrial strategy and food system transformation. It argues that public procurement of school meals can catalyse innovation and investment across the food value chain, shaping markets to deliver food that is healthy, sustainable and accessible.

Drawing on case studies from Brazil, Sweden and Scotland, the report highlights the social, ecological and economic benefits of school meals and their potential to drive structural change when designed as part of a mission-oriented industrial strategy. It calls on governments to reframe school meals as an investment in growth and development, not a cost, and to align procurement and financing tools accordingly.

This report analyses procurement models and financing strategies for home-grown school feeding (HGSF) programmes, drawing on four case studies from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bolivia, Brazil, and Cambodia. It examines how these programmes are structured, financed, and implemented at national and municipal levels, and explores their role in improving nutrition, supporting smallholder farmers, strengthening local food systems, and advancing climate-friendly agri-food policies. Prepared by the Sustainable Financing Initiative (SFI) of the School Meals Coalition, the report highlights context-specific challenges and lessons learned to inform policy dialogue and future programme design.

A new joint report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) examines school meal programmes in Guatemala and Peru, showing how they lower the cost of nutritious diets, improve nutritional quality, strengthen local food systems against extreme weather shocks, and boost child development and public health. It also stresses the need for community engagement, integrated policies, and action to tackle ultra-processed foods and the triple burden of malnutrition.

This case study examines Thailand’s national school lunch programme, one of the longest-standing in the region. It highlights the programme’s design, institutional framework, nutritional standards and meal quality assurance. It also outlines the transition from centralised planning to decentralised budget allocation to local governments, and discusses challenges such as workload, capacity and monitoring. Key features include national school meal guidelines, inspection checklists, and digital tools.

Sineenat Ponprachanuvut, Ratana Somrongthong, Manop Kanato.

The National School Meal Program (PRONAE) was adopted by the Mozambican government in 2013, as a multi-sectoral program with the objective to “reduce the impacts of food insecurity and malnutrition on the education sector, particularly the weak access to education, dropout, absenteeism and failure rates” (Republic of Mozambique, 2013). The program encompasses the provision of diversified meals to students with food procured locally, alongside other interventions such as nutrition education, school gardens and deworming. 

This report analyzes the costs of the national school feeding program (SFP) and attempts to quantify its impact on education, health and nutrition, social protection, and local agricultural economy. By comparing the costs and benefits of the SFP, it aims at assessing its value for money. It contributes to the evidence that the school feeding program in Mozambique presents high value for money when looking at the effect over 7 years of primary education, and can serve as a valuable resource for policymakers, providing insights to inform strategic decisions aimed at strengthening and expanding the national SFP. 

The National School Feeding Program (NSFP) in Namibia is designed to provide nutritious meals to children attending primary school. In this report, we quantify all the costs and benefits incurred by the NSFP and compute its multisectoral impact on education, health and nutrition, social protection, and local agricultural economy. 

By comparing the costs and benefits of the program, this study assesses its value for money. Additionally, it assesses the value for money of the homegrown school feeding (HGSF) pilot currently implemented in Namibia to further evaluate its broader potential in terms of increased benefits to the local economy.