School meals: South East Asia children must see more action

Terry Ferrari shares the critical takeaways from the Southeast Asia School Meals Coalition Summit  

26 November, 2024

I suspect there are few initiatives that attracts 100 governments and 130 organisations as members in just three years. Southeast Asia School Meals Coalition is one of them.  

The answer as to why the coalition, and its recent summit, attracts such important partners as the Kingdom of Cambodia, senior government officials, academics, policy leaders, representatives from ASEAN, the World Bank, the Asia Development Bank, civil society organisations and more is because of its goal: To rapidly scale up school meal programmes; ensuring every child receives a healthy, nutritious meal by 2030.  

Why should this be such an important target for Southeast Asia? There are the presenting issues like the fact that Southeast Asia is one of the regions most affected by anaemia with an estimated 244 million women and 83 million children affected. The significant burden of anaemia is felt by low- and lower-middle income countries, especially rural populations that are poor and lack formal education.  

But then there are the benefits for multiple areas of child development.  Quality school meal programmes are proven to increase access to education, reduce absenteeism, increase retention and gender equality. School Meals are also a critical way to support vulnerable families and children to achieve better outcomes in education, health, and even livelihoods.  Research shown that school feeding programmes can increase enrolment by an average of 9%, attendance by 8% and increasing girls' enrolment by 12%. 

Benefits beyond the classroom  

Many school feeding programmes also engage local small and medium agricultural producers to supply the food, providing income-generation and supporting food systems transformation. 

World Vision Cambodia, for example, has linked producers from local fish farms to the schools providing the children with their favourite local meal – fish soup! The local farmers growing vegetables and rearing fish are provided with skills training before joining the supplier’s programme. They then participate in the supplier selection initiative where they are selected to provide fresh supplies to schools. Local farmers eagerly participate in such programmes as it ensures a stable income from being a supplier to schools. At times, their income doubles ensuring access of finance to provide for children’s education, purchase more land to grow more etc., ultimately provide a stable market for farmers that enables them to break out from the cycle of poverty.  

"One of the reasons keeping me participating in the programme as the supplier, it is because of the stable and increase income I have received from being the supplier. I used to earn 400,000 riels (USD 98.72) but now it has increased to 1,600,000 riels (USD 394.88) per month, which comes in handy to finance my children's education in high school and purchasing land for growing more vegetables" - 39-year-old Sitha farmer and a Home-Grown School Feeding Supplier.  

When governments invest, the impact is greater  

A nutritious school meal is one of the best investments governments can make to improve the overall well-being of children, in both the short and the long term, and that is why many governments are now increasing their investments.  

Countries like the Philippines have doubled their investment in school meals, extending the programme from 60 days to a full academic year1. Similarly, the Republic of Korea has achieved nearly 100% school meals coverage to primary and secondary schools2. These investments translate to greater educational and nutritional outcomes for children.  

With almost one-third of children under five suffering from stunting – or low height-for-age – and undernutrition costing Cambodia about 1.7 percent of its annual GDP, school meals can be a game-changer for countries like the Southeast Asian nation.  

World Vision has been partnering with the Government of Cambodia and the World Food Programme to implement the School Feeding Programme. This year alone, we reached over 110,000 students in 427 schools with daily, nutritious meals.  In those same schools, we provided take home rations to the neediest students, capacity building in areas like safe food preparation, good hygiene, safe storage, nutrition, and health. The establishment of the ‘School Feeding Policy 2024-2035’ is a step in helping combat malnutrition, improving academic performance and health, increasing enrolment and alleviating poverty.      

Creating systems that provide school meals is a multi-prong approach and encompasses far more than just food. For example, World Vision has also established school gardens and built clean water and hand washing facilities and toilets.  These initiatives are often run collaboratively, involving students, teachers, community members, and even parents, thus creating a sense of ownership and fostering community spirit.  

Collaboration is the key to success  

I was privileged to attend the recent Southeast Asia School Meals Coalition Summit myself. It’s always encouraging to see so many people coming together from around the world, and from so many disciplines like government officials, academia, sectorial specialist and INGOs, to collaborate, learn and find innovative and cost-efficient ways to scale up game-changing interventions to benefit all children, exactly the way school meals have proven to do.  

Terry Ferrari is World Vision International's Regional Leader East Asia.