School canteens: Ministry for Communities and Territories Development works to improve construction standards
Oleksii Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine – Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, together with First Lady Olena Zelenska, inspected the progress of the School Nutrition Reform in Odesa Oblast.
They visited several community educational institutions and saw how different types of kitchens are organized, how equipment is modernized and how cooks are trained.
For example, in the Fontansk community, the local kindergarten was equipped with an on-site kitchen, i.e. a basic one, and 90 children are fed daily. In Avangard Lyceum, the kitchen is equipped on a hub basis. As a result, hot lunches are served not only to 800 students of the lyceum, but also to three other educational institutions in the community.
The delegation also visited the Odesa Center for Vocational Education. This is one of three culinary hubs in the region where school canteen workers are trained.
"It is important that communities become leaders in implementing the reform. For our part, we have to work more on the ground so that communities have the capacity to implement changes more actively. We also continue to improve building codes and standards for the design of new food units," said Oleksii Kuleba.
According to the Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration, communities should use digital tools to receive state subvention to purchase equipment and modernization of canteens in their educational institutions. This will help to involve more international partners in implementing the reform on the ground.
The First Lady emphasized that this year the government has allocated UAH 1.5 billion for major repairs in school canteens across Ukraine. The subvention provided for co-financing from local budgets, and communities provided an additional UAH 0.5 billion. In total, these are 173 projects in 23 oblasts.
As a reminder, applications for state subvention for purchasing equipment and modernization of canteens in general secondary education institutions were submitted through the DREAM ecosystem. This made it possible to automatically generate a ranking list of projects by the calculation of their priority according to a point system.
The main conditions for receiving a subvention include the following:
choice of one of three technological models of catering;
the project must provide for the comprehensive modernization of canteens (catering units) of general secondary education institutions, including the purchase of equipment, reconstruction and/or overhaul of premises;
confirmed co-financing from the local budget, the minimum amount of which corresponds to the community's tax capacity index;
safety of the educational process (full-time/mixed learning, availability of shelters or provision for arrangement by the end of the calendar year).
Profile of the financial program in DREAM: https://bit.ly/3SN8jAD
On November 12-13, Kyiv will host the European Regional School Meals Summit as a member of the School Meals Coalition, a global association of 100 countries.
