WEBINAR: Linking school meal nutrition standards with sustainable school food procurement: Final Webinar by FAO, WFP & SF4C
The school food system is a fertile platform for innovations and the scale-up of interventions with potential to improve multiple sustainable development outcomes—better diet quality for children, lower environmental impacts of foods and meals consumed in schools, support for smallholder producers and local economies, and an overall enhancement of societal food culture. Increasingly, it is recognized as an entry point for broader food system transformation. However, the impact of interventions depends on their design, level and fidelity of implementation, and coherence with other policies and procedures of the school food system.
Partners of the School Meals Coalition are working with governments around the world to improve the multiple outcomes of school meal programmes and complementary interventions:
- FAO and WFP are collaborating on the global project School food nutrition guidelines and standards for safeguarding children and adolescents’ right to food. This project has developed a methodology for countries to design robust school meal nutrition standards that go beyond nutrient content, together with guidance on implementation, including sustainable procurement practices.
- SchoolFood4Change (SF4C) sees schools as catalysts for systemic and multi-actor change, promoting sustainable procurement criteria, more sustainable school meals, and a Whole School Food Approach across 12 EU countries.
This is the third and final webinar in our joint series. Thank you to all who joined the earlier sessions—this concluding event will build on those discussions and focus on how nutrition objectives of school meal programmes can be linked with environmental and social sustainability goals through public food procurement.
Webinar Details:
Linking school meal nutrition standards with sustainable school food procurement
Date: Tuesday, 30 September 2025
Time: 3:00 PM (CEST)
Language: English
Audience: School meal planners, procurement officers, technicians, policy advisors, researchers, and international organizations.
Speakers: Fatima Hachem, Senior Nutrition Officer and Team Leader of the Nutrition Education and Consumer Awareness Group at FAO’s Food and Nutrition Division; speaker from SF4C; Luana Swensson, Policy Specialist for Sustainable Public Food Procurement at FAO’s Food and Nutrition Division; speakers from Colombia, Talin, Malmo and Rwanda, Peter Holtsberg, Senior Programme Policy Officer at WFP’s School Meals and Social Protection Service.
Moderator: Vivien Franck, Expert Sustainable Food Systems at ICLEI Europe.