The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Brazil launched in November 2011 the Centre of Excellence Against Hunger, which aims to help countries improve, expand, and eventually run their own national school meal programmes to advance the nutrition, education and food security of schoolchildren.
The Centre of Excellence, located in the capital city of Brasilia, will assist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America by drawing upon the expertise of WFP and Brazil in the fight against hunger, while promoting sustainable school feeding models and other food and nutrition safety nets. The Centre has already launched partnerships between WFP, Brazil, and Mozambique, East Timor, and Haiti.
Governments will also be able to develop and improve their own nationally owned and led programmes, by accessing a global platform to exchange information about school meals and best practices of their own school meals programmes.
The Centre will be headed by Daniel Balaban, who helped provide school meals to more than 47 million children when he was President of the Brazilian National Education Development Fund.
Brazil is well known for the success of its Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) strategy for reducing poverty and food insecurity and its school meals programme, which reaches about 45 million children per year. Every day, in 60 countries around the world, WFP provides school meals to around 22 million children.
