19 Years On, Nigeria's School Feeding Program Still Falls Short

Free school meal programs help improve students’ health, support better academic performance and combat hunger and food insecurity. Several states have passed legislation to keep free meal plans active after federal waivers ran out in 2022. In Michigan alone in October 2023, the 3,459 school meal sites across the state served 10,064,686 free breakfasts and 17,659,809 free lunches.

The Communities in Schools program (CIS) places trained navigators in low-income schools to provide wraparound social support, helping students and families access public benefits, cover emergency expenses, provide behavioral counseling and address barriers that prevent students from succeeding academically. The non-profit has been helping students for 50 years, serving 2 million children across 26 states, and has seen significant academic and economic outcomes, including increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates.

The Home-Grown School Feeding Program provides one square meal a day to students in public primary schools in an effort to combat poor school attendance and malnutrition, feeding thousands of students each day. In addition to improving the economic conditions for farmers and food vendors, as well as rates of malnutrition, the program has led to a 35.6% increase in school enrollment.

In the district of Bijapur, a town in India, there was a malnutrition rate of 40 per cent in 2019. In order to tackle the problem officials identified the areas with high malnutrition and directed their efforts to those places. They introduced nutrient rich millets in child care centers. They also created kitchen gardens to provide the community with access to fresh vegetables. Finally, they brought Nutrient Rehabilitation Centers in the community since parents were hesitant to take their children to them. Two years later, malnutrition rates dropped by 12 percent.

Across America, there is a food insecurity problem that increasingly impacts children as they head into summer breaks from school. To address the gap that is created during this time, a school district in Denver, Colorado has turned to recycling out-of-use school buses into mobile cafes that are open to all students during lunchtime, regardless of the district they live in.

For many college students, financial aid programs can help them afford tuition, but it doesn't cover necessities like food that are required for true affordability. To change that, colleges around the country are offering food scholarships and more comprehensive services.

"Healthy Mama, Healthy Pikin" is a youth-led nutrition program in Ebonyi State, Nigeria that layers nutrition education into routine immunization days at primary health care facilities. The program teaches parents how to enrich diets with local, affordable ingredients, distributes vegetable seeds for backyard gardens, and trains health workers to provide ongoing nutrition counseling, all in an effort to prevent child malnutrition. Since launching in November 2024, the program has reached over 300 parents and established backyard gardens in more than 100 households.

Detroit Public Schools is tackling chronic absenteeism by addressing the underlying reasons students are absent. Attendance agents work with families to address their needs and connect them to necessary resources like food, transportation, and school supplies.

In low-income districts, the school nurse is often a family’s first health care provider, and the role at places like Wildwood High School and Glenwood Avenue School has expanded to provide everything from warm coats and food donations for children and their families living in hunger.

The San Francisco Unified School District is piloting a collaboration with the design firm IDEO to re-imagine the school food system and help combat childhood obesity by better designing the space and the experience of how children eat, as much as the type of food they consume.