The European Regional School Meals Summit took place in Kyiv, bringing together Ukrainian and European officials, experts, and civic activists to strengthen school feeding programs in Europe and beyond.
The Summit's expo zone showcased projects from communities and regional administrations to modernize canteens. The results of the distribution of the state subvention for the arrangement of canteens using the DREAM ecosystem were presented.
Before the Summit, a pipeline of school canteens and food block projects that meet modern school nutrition requirements was created at the DREAM ecosystem. They are ready to attract funding, including international financing.
The list of projects is available here: https://bit.ly/48PUqbn
The opening ceremony of the Summit was attended by First Lady Olena Zelenska, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi, Minister of Health of Ukraine Viktor Liashko, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine - Minister for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine Oleksii Kuleba and representatives of international organizations that constantly support the implementation of the school nutrition reform.
During the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal, noted in his speech that the health of our children is an absolute priority for Ukraine:
- 1.8 million secondary school students are provided with meals. About half of them eat free hot breakfasts or lunches at the expense of funds provided by the state. This year, free hot meals are available for all primary school students. The Government has allocated UAH 2 billion to the local level. Changes are underway in food procurement. We are focusing on local producers, thus stimulating farming and entrepreneurship. We are systematically modernizing canteens in schools in all regions of Ukraine, which have not been updated for decades. We have allocated UAH 1.5 billion to overhaul school canteens and purchase modern equipment.
First Lady Olena Zelenska, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi, and Minister of Health of Ukraine Viktor Liashko presented the school nutrition reform in Ukraine to all foreign delegates. The First Lady recalled the key stages of the reform, which began before the war. She emphasized the importance of adapting the program in wartime:
- Food is a significant component of success in education and life. That is why we first gathered many different institutions at the same table at the same time: The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Economy, representatives of public organizations, including nutrition experts, cooks, doctors, nutritionists, dieticians - and started acting, step by step, - Olena Zelenska said.
The Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine was involved in implementing a comprehensive school nutrition reform until 2022. Still, the full-scale invasion created additional challenges, including large-scale internal displacement of children, local budget deficits, loss of suppliers, power outages, lack of qualified personnel, etc. This has prompted fundamental changes in approaches to catering and the culture of schoolchildren's nutrition in general.
- A new approach to providing quality school meals began in the Kyiv region, where, in particular, the first factory kitchen was established. Now, we are scaling up this cascade method across the country, involving representatives of communities and regional administrations. We are also establishing regulations: we have already approved the Code and Guidelines for School Catering, which provides for using three key models: a basic kitchen, a hub kitchen, and a factory kitchen. We have developed new construction standards, which we plan to approve by the end of this year, - emphasized Oleksii Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine, Minister for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine.
The Summit was attended by the heads of regional state administrations, government officials from leading European countries, representatives of international organizations such as UNICEF, WFP, WHO Office in Ukraine, UNDP, and the Swiss-Ukrainian project "Decentralization for Democratic Education" (DECIDE), diplomats, and international experts. The event brought together representatives of more than 20 international organizations, including such leading institutions as the World Food Program (WFP), Temet International Oy Ltd, the Italian Agency for Cooperation Development (AICS), the School Nutrition and Health Research Consortium, JICA, the Partnership for Child Development, KEK-CDC, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the World Bank.
