The United Nations’World Food Programme (WFP) has announced a $10.7 million commitment from the Rockefeller Foundation to provide better nutrition to vulnerable children through  school meal programs in Benin, Ghana, Honduras, and India.

Over two and a half years, the project is expected to provide fortified food to more than one million school children in Benin, Ghana, and Honduras, while also promoting local food production and thereby benefiting smallholder farmers, as well as informing school cooks about optimal nutrition for children. In India, the project will support WFP’s technical assistance to the government’s school feeding program, directly benefiting 325,000 children, and will work to reach more than 110 million through food fortification and healthy eating campaigns.

According to WFP, school feeding programs are the most extensive social safety net in the world, directly benefiting 388 million children globally, but recently the programs have had to contend with the increasing costs of wheat and maize due to the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

“School meals give tens of millions of children in these countries their only reliable meal of the day. Expanding school feeding programs in ways that promote the procurement of highly nutritious food will make those children healthier even as it catalyzes larger changes in the food system,” said Roy Steiner, senior vice president for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative. “Ultimately, food systems that are nutritious, regenerative and equitable will have the biggest impact on ending global hunger and malnutrition.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/SDI Productions)