Consolidating School Food and Nutrition Approaches in Europe and Central Asia

FAO is organizing a regional workshop “Consolidating school food and nutrition approaches in Europe and Central Asia” under the FAO project “Developing Capacity for Strengthening Food Security and Nutrition in Selected Countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia”, which is funded by the Russian Federation.

The aim of this regional workshop is to contribute to the production of a conceptual approach, a broad framework, to guide the implementation of school food and nutrition approaches in the region as a whole. Based on current country experiences, the workshop will discuss innovative ideas and future directions (targets) for governments, development partners and donor agencies in the region to support the progress of school food and nutrition approaches. The framework will identify realistic actions that could be implemented within 3 to 5 years at countries level. This will serve to guide FAO and donor interventions for countries in the region. The backbone of the resulting framework will be how to increase the institutional, social, economic and environmental sustainability of the school food and nutrition programmes.
The main objectives are to:

• Share experiences of implementation of various school food and nutrition approaches through highlighting the main obstacles and the enabling environment in the region for an efficient implementation.
• Exchange lessons learned and make recommendations to increase the sustainability of school food and nutrition approaches in the region.
• Illustrate good practices of linking the school feeding programmes with local economic development: agriculture, sustainable value chains, social protection, education, trade, and sustainable food systems

This workshop will follow the FAO approach for school food and nutrition that is based on four elements: i) enabling policy, legal and institutional environment; ii) food and nutrition education; iii) healthy food environment and school food; and iv) inclusive procurement and value chains. An additional element of coordination government, civil society and private sector is added.