The State of School Feeding Worldwide 2020

This publication by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provides an analysis of the State of School Feeding Worldwide in 2020. A report on the State of School Feeding Worldwide was first published by WFP in 2013. This 2020 version follows a similar format and uses the best available data sources to describe key aspects of coverage, implementation practices and costs of school-based health and nutrition programmes worldwide. In addition, the 2020 version seeks to analyse the direction and scale of change between 2013 and 2020, and to provide an update on advances in evidence and understanding of school feeding programmes.

The issue has an even greater sense of urgency as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020 brought an end to a near-decade of global growth in school feeding programmes. This publication provides an analysis of the state of school feeding programmes before the COVID-19 pandemic; it describes the damage caused by the pandemic; and presents what can be done to restore this remarkable global safety net – not only to get back to where the world was in January 2020, but to build back better.