London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

First Lady Olena Zelenska welcomed European ministers and experts to Kyiv, Ukraine for the European School Meals Summit (12-13 November 2024) to discuss the collective goal of ensuring every child has access to a nutritious meal at school by 2030.

This ambitious goal is that of the School Meals Coalition (SMC) – a global government-led alliance of more than 100 countries committed to strengthening and scaling up their national school meals programmes as an investment in the future of their schoolchildren.

At the summit, hosted by Ukraine’s School Nutrition Reform team, Professor Donald Bundy, Director of the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), chaired a panel discussion with European finance ministers on the impact of school meals on the economy.

Professor Bundy said: “There is a growing body of evidence that school meals are a powerful vehicle for economic development. Having once only been understood as a way of ensuring the most vulnerable children don’t go hungry, we now know school meals are much more than a plate of food – with the potential to promote child wellbeing, improve learning outcomes, boost local agricultural practices, and ultimately contribute to the creation of a nation’s human capital. This is important for all countries, but no more so than for countries preparing to rebuild from crisis.”

The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition is the research initiative of the SMC, established to support member states to optimise their national programmes through the provision of independent evidence on the design, implementation, and impact of school meals and complementary school health services.

Hosted for the first time in Ukraine, who joined the School Meals Coalition in 2023, the European Summit was an opportunity for key decision-makers from 20 European countries to share their experiences and learn from best practice – including hearing from Ukraine’s School Nutrition Reform team on its experience of strengthening Ukraine’s school meals programme during times of war. Discussions focused on understanding the unique benefits of school meals across several sectors, including health, education, social protection, and agriculture – with leaders committing to greater multi-sectoral collaboration at the local, national, and regional levels.

Ukraine’s School Nutrition Reform team was established by First Lady Zelenska in 2019 as part of a broader effort by the government to rebuild the national education system, which had been in steady decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2022, following the outbreak of the war with Russia, school meals took on a new dimension – as a long-term resilience-building intervention to support the future wellbeing and prosperity of the country.

Opening the Summit, First Lady Zelenska said: “I first became interested in school food through my wish to ensure that all children, including my own, are appropriately supported during the five days a week, for nine months of the year, that they spend in school. This concern became critical when considering the importance of food reliability in a time of war.

“Food is a significant factor in academic and life success. That’s why we first brought many different institutions together at one table: the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Economy, representatives of civil society organizations, including nutrition experts, chefs, doctors, nutritionists, and dietitians – and we started taking action, step by step.”

Since 2022, Ukraine has embarked on several initiatives to continue to accelerate its School Nutrition Reform and scale up its school meals programme towards universal coverage, including formally joining the School Meals Coalition in October 2023.

In that time, the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition has supported Ukraine in its mission to reach every child in the country with a nutritious meal, through the development of an evidence-led policy brief with the WHO and the creation of a case study documenting the organisation of the current Ukrainian school meals programme.

Professor Bundy said: “The Research Consortium looks forward to continuing to support Ukraine and all countries of the School Meals Coalition to gain a deeper understanding into their national programmes. Through our Global Academy of more than 1,000 experts based in over 90 countries worldwide, we are committed to building a truly global evidence base on what makes a successful school meals programme in various economic, political, environmental, and cultural contexts – including those experiencing conflict, and those simply seeking to give their schoolchildren the best start in life, as an investment in the future of their country.”