School feeding programs can help to get children into school and help to keep them there, through enhancing enrollment and reducing absenteeism; and once the children are in school, the programs can contribute to their learning, through avoiding hunger and enhancing cognitive abilities. School feeding looks simple but is a complex intervention requiring trade-offs during the design of programs – objectives, targets and modalities for feeding, as well as costs. Countries implement different school feeding program models and different models can co-exist in the same country. There are centralized and decentralized school feeding programs which are managed either by the government or by the private sector. The complexity of school feeding can also be attributed to the many objectives that programs respond to. School feeding has education, health and nutrition, agriculture and community development objectives. But we know that successful programs are those designed and implemented collaboratively.
School feeding programs can help to get children into school and help to keep them there, through enhancing enrollment and reducing absenteeism; and once the children are in school, the programs can contribute to their learning, through avoiding hunger and enhancing cognitive abilities. School feeding looks simple but is a complex intervention requiring trade-offs during the design of programs – objectives, targets and modalities for feeding, as well as costs. Countries implement different school feeding program models and different models can co-exist in the same country. There are centralized and decentralized school feeding programs which are managed either by the government or by the private sector. The complexity of school feeding can also be attributed to the many objectives that programs respond to. School feeding has education, health and nutrition, agriculture and community development objectives. But we know that successful programs are those designed and implemented collaboratively.