Project profile — Providing Home-Grown Nutritious School Meals to Primary School Children

• Sri Lanka (100.00%)

• Basic Education: School feeding (11250) (100.00%)

• Gender equality (significant objective)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (significant objective)
• Participatory development and good governance (not targeted)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (significant objective)
• Urban issues (not targeted)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (principal objective)
• Youth Issues (not targeted)
• Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) (not targeted)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• Nutrition (principal objective)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

This project aims to provide nutritious and safe school meals to vulnerable primary school children in Sri Lanka. These meals are locally sourced and sustainable as a result of market linkages with local smallholder farmers, particularly women. Project activities include: (1) providing nutrition-sensitive home-gardening kits and training on climate-smart agriculture and financial management to women farmers; (2) creating market linkages between school meal suppliers and poultry farmers; (3) raising awareness of school principals, teachers and students on gender equality, nutrition and healthy diets; and (4) promoting healthy habits, such as hand washing, in schools. This project expects to directly benefit 1,700 women farmers and 170,000 primary grade school children in 10 districts in the North, East and North Central provinces.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved quality of school meals through local nutrient-dense foods, sourced from small-holder farmers, particularly women, and adherence to food safety standards; (2) increased consumption of nutritious and safe food among girl and boys; and (3) improved engagement of multi-sectoral stakeholders (national and sub-national governments) to scale-up the Home-Grown School Meals modality.

Results achieved at the end of the project (August 2023) include: (1) provided support to smallholder farmers in 821 micro-farms and 730 poultry farms, by providing key agricultural inputs (including plant seedlings, irrigation equipment, poultry feed) and capacity-building in support of production diversification; (2) developed and implemented a social behaviour change communication campaign towards the promotion and improvement of nutrition practices; (3) provided training on nutrition to principals and school meals programme relevant teachers of 795 schools; (4) promoted food safety practices through the delivery of workshops and trainings for healthy cooking and the provision of food-safe carrier containers to 802 meal suppliers and cooking pots to 96 school kitchens for hygienic food handling; and (5) supported World Food Programme and a private sector partner to conduct entrepreneur and gender-sensitive household cash management training for 42 women development officers. This project responded to an emergency created by the re-emergence of COVID-19 where the National School Meal programme was temporarily suspended. 41,121 primary school students received take home food rations to counter any possible negative impact on their nutrition levels, utilizing repurposed funds from the project.

• Proactive disclosure