Statement From Elizabeth Yee, Executive Vice President of Programs, on the Call to Action for Resilient School Meals

The Rockefeller Foundation welcomes the global commitment made today at the Paris Peace Forum Child Summit to ensure every child has access to healthy, nutritious meals at school. We commend France, alongside the other co-chairs of the School Meals Coalition, Brazil, Finland, and Kenya, and the many countries that came together in Paris today. The Children First Declaration as well as the Call to Action for Resilient School Meals are important steps toward turning that commitment into lasting, country-led investment.

Resilient School Meals are not only a child nutrition program, but also an investment in farmers and food systems. As climate change and conflict make food shocks more frequent, school meals are a safety net against hunger. They expand access to education, improve health, and create jobs. When well designed, they are economic infrastructure: they give smallholder farmers a reliable market and help countries move toward more sustainable agriculture.

That’s why more than 70 countries have made robust commitments to expand their school meal programs, even as aid budgets shrink and fiscal pressures grow. They understand that feeding children in school delivers extraordinary returns on investment. We thank all those who have endorsed these efforts, and we invite global financing institutions, philanthropies, and investors to join them by supporting country-led efforts to build the resilient food systems and local supply chains that school meal programs depend on.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bet on Regenerative School Meals is an investment to expand school meals that nourish children while sourcing from farms and food systems that restore soil and support local producers. The bet builds on our decades of work to transform food systems to better serve the people and communities who need them most. This includes demonstrating the investment case for regenerative school meals — making it less risky and attracting other investors to multiply our collective impact. Today’s show of international support in Paris demonstrates that even in a challenging moment, countries and partners are coming together to advance this work.

We look forward to continuing to work with a variety of partners — global coalitions like the School Meals Coalition and the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty; financing institutions like the World Bank; UN partners The World Food Programme, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Food and Agriculture Organization; fellow philanthropies; and other partners — to feed children, create jobs, and protect our soil and food supply on a warming planet.