Compiled by the Partnership for Child Development at Imperial College London, the World Food Programme, the World Bank and the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development, this is the first sourcebook of its kind to document government-led school feeding programmes in low and middle income countries. It includes a compilation of concise but comprehensive chapters about national programmes in 14 countries from sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. The sourcebook highlights the trade-offs associated with alternative school feeding models and analyses the overarching themes, trends and challenges which run across these programmes.This sourcebook supports learning and knowledge exchange among countries looking to strengthen and scale-up national school feeding programmes. The evidence presented here sheds light on identified global good practices which can be employed to improve the quality and effectiveness of programmes that positively impact on millions of children and communities worldwide.

This framework fosters the replication and scaling up of home-grown school feeding models and the mapping of opportunities for linking such programmes with relevant agricultural development and rural transformation investments.

This synopsis summarizes the content and structured process of the Resource framework and provide guidance on the main considerations and elements relevant for home grown school feeding programmes. This publication is intended to support policy-makers, development partners and governments, as well as civil society and community based organisations and the private sector to design, implement and scaling up school feeding models designed to provide children in schools with safe, diverse and nutritious food, sourced locally from smallholders. It is based on a comprehensive review, and wide consultations among the partner organizations at global, regional and country level, as well as with experts and members of various governments and relevant stakeholders at Global Child Nutrition Forums and other relevant venues for learning and policy dialogue. The Resource Framework is a knowledge product that harmonizes the existing knowledge and tools, and builds on the wealth of expertise of the partners. This publication is the result of a broad based collaborative effort initiated, coordinated and facilitated by the World Food Programme, involving collaboration of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Global Child Nutrition Foundation, the Partnership for Child Development , the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the World Food Programme Centre of Excellence in Brazil.

This review provides a snapshot of the state-of-art of School Feeding Programmes in 14 of the 15 CARICOM Member States. It provides an overview of the different models of school feeding programmes that currently exist in the Caribbean, challenges faced and recommendations for improvement. Among the aspects evaluated include: the governance structure, nutritional quality of meal served, linkages with small farmers for the procurement of products used in the meals, involvement of children in school gardens related activities, etc. The document includes a case study for each of the participating countries (namely Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago). For each of these countries, an Annual Net Benefit Analysis was conducted, using information collected in 2017. The aim is that the document can provide preliminary information and recommendations that can be relevant for governments, public organizations, donors, opinion leaders, private sectors, and others toward strengthening school feeding programmes in the Caribbean. It was developed with the support of the University of the West Indies and the Caribbean Agro-Economic Society under the leadership of Prof. Carlisle Pemberton and Dr. Hazel Paterson-Andrews.

This publication seeks to support practitioners by providing methodological guidelines for conducting rigorous impact assessments of Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes. It presents an overview of the main technical issues to be addressed depending on the characteristics of the context and of the intervention itself. While these guidelines are mainly designed for monitoring and evaluation officers working for United Nations agencies, local governments or non-governmental organizations, its contents can be of interest to a wider audience of policymakers, researchers and practitioners interested in multi-sectoral, complex programmes linking agriculture and nutrition.

School Food, Equity and Social Justice provides contemporary, critical examinations of policies and practices relating to food in schools across 25 countries from an equity and social justice perspective. The book is divided into three sections: Food politics and policies; Sustainability and development; and, Teaching and learning about food. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics with practitioner backgrounds, the chapters in this collection broaden discussions on school food to consider its educational and environmental implications, the ideals of food in schools, the emotional and ideological components of schooling food, and the relationships with home and everyday life. Our aim is to provide enhanced insight into matters of social justice in diverse contexts, and visions of how greater equality and equity may be achieved through school food policy and in school food programs. We expect this book to become essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers in health education, health promotion, educational practice and policy, public health, nutrition and social justice education.

Governments and international development partners investing over $40 USD billion a year in school meals have shown interest in linking these programs with agriculture sector development, through what has become known as “Home-Grown” school feeding (HGSF). Nevertheless, evidence on the effectiveness of HGSF and agriculture is limited. This article reports on the findings of a three-year cluster randomized trial implemented in 58 districts of Ghana including a panel of 1,668 households. Communities were randomly assigned to 1) standard school meals; 2) HGSF or 3) control with no intervention. Post-intervention, the caterer-level analysis highlighted major challenges related to delayed program disbursements, resulting in a mismatch between budgeted and actual caterer outlay on food purchases per pupil equivalent to approximately 50% of the budgeted per child per day allocation. For caterers, by far the largest procurement channel was through traders, though there is evidence that HGSF may have increased the share of value purchased directly from smallholders. We find no strong evidence that the school feeding program or HGSF affected smallholders market structure, farm, non-farm and household income. When interpreting these null results, it is important to consider the findings of two parallel studies that showed positive effects of this national program on school children’s learning, cognition, and nutrition outcomes. The national program can still be considered as an effective social protection strategy with multiple objectives, even if the agriculture objectives remain aspirational.