: A Coalition Has Been Launched to Provide School Lunches to Hundreds of Millions of Needy Children Worldwide #WorldNEWS UNITED NATIONS — Over 60 governments and 50 U. N. agencies and organizations

A Coalition Has Been Launched to Provide School Lunches to Hundreds of Millions of Needy Children Worldwide #WorldNEWS
UNITED NATIONS — Over 60 governments and 50 U. N. agencies and organizations have joined forces to press for the restoration of school lunches for all 388 million primary school children who were receiving the meals before the COVID-19 pandemic.
They also will push for school meals to be started for 73 million vulnerable youngsters who weren’t getting them before the coronavirus struck in early 2020.
Led by France and Finland, the School Meals Coalition was officially launched at a U. N. event Tuesday with a longer-term goal of ensuring that every needy child in the world gets a nutritious school meal by 2030.
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Finland’s U. N. ambassador, Jukka Salovaara, called school meals “a great social equalizer,” saying they “can really act as a social safety net within communities. ”
Since the coalition was formed in September, he said, the support has been very encouraging, but “as the goal of the coalition is to reach all children by 2030 we have to have a very broad participation. ”

Dedy Sutisna/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images An empty primary school classroom in Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia, on March 16, 2020, after all schools were ordered closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The French Mission’s development expert, Olivier Richard, told reporters that “school meals are very important for the recovery of our society from the impact of COVID 19” because they “keep the children at school, and they improve their nutrition, their health and educational performing. ”
Richard said he doesn’t think the coalition will get support from every country, which is why the U. N. agencies that operate globally are such important members.
In a joint declaration late Tuesday, five U. N. agencies threw their support behind the coalitions campaign, saying school health and nutrition programs support the growth and development of school children and adolescents and “can help to combat child poverty, hunger and malnutrition in all its forms. ”
“They attract children to school and support children’s learning, and long-term health and well-being,” said the declaration signed by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U. N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the U. N. Children’s Fund, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization.
According to the coalition, the 388 million students receiving lunch before the pandemic represented one out of every two primary school children worldwide.
Carmen Burbano, director of the World Food Program’s school-based programs, told reporters that by May 2020, 370 million of those children had lost access to the meals because schools closed, “so basically, all of these programs collapsed.