The study is an innovative tool to strengthen the implementation of school feeding programmes, providing evidence on topics and actions that require greater attention.
Paulo Beraldo
Brasília, Brazil, March 17, 2025 – On March 15, the results of the study “Analysis of progress in school feeding programmes”, titled AMPAE, were presented. The study was conducted by the Sustainable School Feeding Network (RAES) and addressed school feeding in six Latin American and Caribbean countries.
RAES is a trilateral South-South cooperation initiative developed by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Fund for Educational Development (FNDE) of the Ministry of Education and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which acts as the network’s executive secretariat.
The countries participating in AMPAE were Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic. The main objectives of the study include:
- Presenting evidence on topics and actions in school feeding programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean that require greater attention from national managers and other regional and global stakeholders.
- Designing and applying a diagnostic tool with indicators to analyze the progress and results of each participating country.
- Identifying topics that need more attention so that the involved countries can continue developing their programmes, in addition to proposing new actions at the national and regional levels.
- Establishing recommendations to guide RAES’s technical support activities.
- Providing input for the joint construction of the regional school feeding agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The meeting was attended by Fernanda Pacobahyba, president of FNDE; Karine Santos, general coordinator of Brazil’s National School Feeding Programme; Juliana Miguel Coelho, chief of staff, and Anderson Sampaio Santos, director of the Directorate of Educational Actions, also from FNDE; Cecília Malaguti do Prado, coordinator of trilateral technical cooperation with international organizations at ABC; Paola Barbieri, project analyst at ABC; and Najla Veloso and Miriam Oliveira, representing FAO and the RAES Network’s executive secretariat.
The study received positive feedback from participants and will contribute to the next steps of international cooperation in the field.
“This work required great internal organization, extensive effort, and the result was extraordinary. Continuous evaluation is essential to improve our initiatives and ensure that objectives are achieved efficiently,” highlighted Fernanda Pacobahyba. “We remain united in collaboration and committed to strengthening our school feeding programs.”
“Now, the next steps are to present this data to the countries and continue providing technical support on these priority topics. In the future, we will have another edition of the study, with more interested countries, and we will focus on discussing these topics at the in-person RAES event in 2025,” added Najla Veloso, executive secretary of the RAES Network.
