School Meals Save Lives and Strengthen Communities

16 October 2025, New York – Globally, 673 million people live in hunger today and, every year, 45 million girls and boys suffer from severe malnutrition. These are the tragic and real numbers behind food insecurity today.

We must unite efforts to address hunger and the underlying causes of poverty, displacement, conflict and climate change. Education – and school feeding programmes in particular – offer a key entry point to address these interconnected challenges.

The world is making uneven progress, with girls and boys living in protracted crises most at risk. According to World Food Programme’s (WFP) latest State of School Feeding Worldwide report, 466 million children are receiving school meals, an increase of 80 million over the last four years. There is strong national investment in school meals, but countries faced with armed conflict, forced displacement and climate change impacts rarely have sufficient resources to provide healthy meals for every child.  This is where multilateral funds like Education Cannot Wait (ECW) can make a difference.

From 2023 to 2024, ECW and its strategic partners provided school feeding programmes for approximately 385,000 children. Not only do these children receive healthy meals, but the community benefits as well.

In Cameroon and Haiti, for example, ECW funding of the World Food Programme buys food from local smallholder farmers, and community members cook and clean at school kitchens. Such programmes can strengthen local economies and make food systems more resilient. It’s a systems-wide approach to a global challenge, and girls and boys impacted by crises benefit most.

On World Food Day, ECW calls for increased investment in school feeding programmes for the 234 million girls and boys caught in crises. This is our investment in healthy minds and healthy bodies, our investment in an end to cycles of poverty and displacement, and our investment in climate resilience and sustainable economic development.