Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Author of submission (name, surname, position, organization)

Naira Harutyuyan, PhD, Lecturer, Yerevan Haybusak University, Yerevan, Armenia

Title of your example

Sustainable School Feeding in Armenia

Theme

School food and nutrition programs linked to the agricultural sector

Date, location and geographic scope of your example (regional, sub-regional, national, local)

• Location: Armenia
• Date: started in 2010. There are plans to scaleup it to a national program by 2030
• Geographical scope: regional and national. It started as a regional program for three marzes/regions (Syunik, Vayots Dzor and Ararat) out of total ten in Armenia, currently aiming to become a nationwide program because of a success.  

Main responsible entity(ies) for the implementation of your example

• Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia is an initiative partner (Armenia). It is a State executive body, which develops and implements state policy of the Government of Armenia in the sphere of education and science. Main activities: Development of long-term and medium-term public education development programs, their monitoring and evaluation. Development and organization of the implementation of programs of international cooperation in the field of education. Implementation of the budget process in the field of Education and Science
• Social and Industrial Food Services Institute (SIFI), non-governmental organization, is the lead applicant (Russia). SIFI works on the research of different problems concerned to feeding in different industries, development and implementation of comprehensive (social) feeding systems, with respect to industrial specification and questions of food products quality and safety, development of different concepts, programs, standards and methodologies. SIFI is actively cooperating with international organizations to carry out activities on food security on behalf of the Russian Federation, which will remain at the core of the multilateral politics in the foreseeable perspective and continue to play a prominent role in shaping international agenda.
•  World Food Programme (WFP) is an initiative partner that provides operational and technical support to the program (Italy). WFP is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations and the world's largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security 

Key objectives and implementation approach of your example (approximately 600 words)

The Sustainable School Feeding Programme objective are:

• to provide nutrition balanced feeding for primary school children in most vulnerable and food insecure regions in Armenia;
• to increase marketing opportunities at national level with cost-effective local purchases;
• to improve data collection on attendance and enrolment in the country in order to optimize the costing structure of the school feeding programmes.
• to support the design of a sustainable and affordable national school feeding policy and programme embedded in national priorities and budgets.

Funding and technical assistance of your example (approximately 200 words)

• As of September 2017, 96% of the requirement are confirmed with funds from :

• The Russian Federation: USD 28.5 million (94% of the requirement).
• The Government of Armenia: USD 0.18 million (0.6% of the requirement).
• Private donors: USD 0.13 million (0.4% of the requirement).
• Multilateral donor assistance: USD 0.1 million (0.3% of the requirement).
• Other sources: USD 0.24 million (0.7% of the requirement).

• WFP and NGO Social and Industrial Food Services Institute (SIFI) provide operational and technical assistance to the Government to establish the foundations for a sustainable home-grown national school feeding programme.

Key stakeholders involved. Describe the cross-sectoral coordination mechanism of your example, if any (approximately 300 words)

• Ministry of Education
• Local Authorities
• School administration
• the World Food Programme (WFP)
• The Russian Federation as a main donor that provided financial assistance
• Local food suppliers
• Local people working as employees
• Parents

How your example addresses food security and nutrition challenges. Describe linkages to social protection policies / school food programs / sustainable food systems (approximately 600 words)

After the global crisis of 2008, Armenia has experienced significant recession and suffered decline in GDP and rise of food and fuel prices. As a result, 50 percent of families had to buy cheaper products and cut their food consumption; 25 percent of families had to buy their food on credit and ask relatives for help; 5 percent of families limited the amount consumed by their adult members to allow small children to eat. Furthermore, more than 10 percent of students started to skip school more often, due to the need to work at home and help their parents. This resulted in food emergency, especially for schoolchildren in the remote regions and budgetary pressure on safety net expenditure. The urgency was matured to prevent food and nutrition crisis of children through implementation of school feeding programme.

In 2010, the World Food Programme with the financial support of the Russian Federation launched “Development of Sustainable School Feeding” Programme to assist the government of Armenia to mitigate economic crisis impacts on children by enhancing their food and nutrition status through school meals. The program entailed initial transition period of three years to assist schoolchildren in the three most vulnerable and food insecure marzes/regions: Syunik, Vayots Dzor and Ararat.  During the pilot period, the project did not cover all schools in the target regions, but prioritized those in the most food insecure areas within these regions which were characterised by high levels of unemployment and food insecure populations. In case of success the programme was supposed to be enlarged into other regions and further to involve senior school students as well.  Thus, in 2014, a gradual handover of the programme started to the Armenian Government that took responsibility to ensure the base funding of school feeding with estimated cost of AMD140 per student per day to provide 280 kcal/day. Today, the national school feeding programme covers the provinces of Tavush, Vayots Dzor, Syunik and Ararat, providing school meals to 29000 primary children amounting to about one third of the total number of primary school students in the country.  Next in the row are the provinces of Shirak and Aragatsotn.

The programme also entails renovation of school kitchen infrastructure, developing of local agriculture and food processing and job creation. Proposed project will fully align with the Governmental efforts on provision of locally produced food for school feeding in the proposed regions. 

During the transition period two models of school meals were introduced: 1) Hot meal for schools that meet standards; and 2) School milk, snacks or fruit bars for schools that did not have the minimum facilities required for the provision of hot meals until they could upgrade their kitchen facilities. In general, school students receive six to eight different food items that make up nutritious and tasty meals. During the 2016 Global Child Nutrition Forum in Yerevan, the participant of the Forum from all over the world had a chance to visit some of the schools and taste themselves the school meals. Schools also conduct various initiatives such as interactive games with children to train them on healthy eating and hygiene.

The program also targeted strengthening governmental capacity to develop a national school meals policy. In 2013 the Government of Armenia adopted the Strategy of Sustainable School Feeding elaborated under the programme.  

The School Feeding Programme has a local food purchase approach and emphasizes nutrition, social protection and links with smallholder farmers. This enables to enhance the overall food security status on the country level. Thus, the long-term advantages of the project include increase of access to education, improvement of health and nutrition of school-age children as well as improvement of social and economic development of the country.

Overall, the intended nationalization of the project will help more children to exercise their rights to nutrition, health and education, which contributes directly to at least nine Sustainable Development Goals and is also aligned with the priorities of the 2014–2025 Armenia Development Strategy — human capital development and improvement of social protection. The Programme complements to the achievement of the UN World Food Programme Strategic Goal 4 - Reduce chronic hunger and malnutrition - and Strategic Goal 5 - Increase the capacity of countries to reduce hunger, including through hand-over strategies and local purchase. Moreover, the National School Feeding program complements governmental reforms in sphere of school programs, which makes the whole program an integral part of a wider social protection policy.

What are the elements needed for the practice to be institutionally, socially, economically and environmentally resilient and/or sustainable? (approximately 500 words)

• Stepby-step design incorporating a transition period of the project started as a pilot with a limited geographical coverage (3 marzes out of 10) and a prospect of scalingup to other marzes in case of pilot success and capacity building for handing-over to the Government to administer further.
• Handover and financial sustainability were envisaged by the incremental implementation plan with preparatory initial period (2013) when the project was implemented by WFP, implementation period (20142021) with participation of the Government with limited support from external donors and independent implementation in the long-term perspective by the Government using the internal resources of the Government budget and the resources of internal donors.

• Political commitment on highest governmental level from the very beginning of the project was a key for getting the things started, ensuring the success of implementation and safeguarding the sustainability of the programme.

• National school feeding policy that was designed and is in the process of further development with national food security priorities and budget allocations.
• Stakeholder cooperation: the program brought together school directors, local authorities, parents, local farmers and national authorities. More active involvement of parent councils was highlighted. Parents' visits to schools became more frequent, keeping children's needs in focus and strengthening parentschool relations. Their closer ties with the project resulted in improved community contributions, which enabled the purchase of additional food items such as meat once or twice a month, and for the purchase of complementary non-food items. Communities contributed with cash, food and voluntary work contributing to better implementation of school meals. Contributing to the sustainability of the project, school gardens cultivated with support from parents and the wider community complemented the children's diets with vegetables and fruit, enriching and diversifying school meals.
• Replication: national and international. The program formed the basis for nationalization.  The Armenian experience can be regarded as an interesting practice to be studies for replicating nationally, regionally and globally, particularly in former Soviet countries that share a common context and struggle with common issues.

The impact of your example on national policies and people’s lives. What indicators have been used to measure it? (approximately 400 words)

• As of September 2017, the WFP handed-over the implementation of School Feeding Program in four marzes/regions: Syunik, Vayots Dzor, Ararat and Tavush to the Government of Armenia. As a result, about 29,000 schoolchildren get school meals are under the direct management of the Government in these four marzes.
• Currently, 89,000 schoolchildren of 1-4 grades in 900 selected schools every day have got hot meals, such as a variety of soups, cereals, pasta, pilafs, salads, cheese and other vitamin rich food in all the provinces of Armenia.  About 30% of the total number of primary school students benefit from school feeding under the governmental support in four marzes.  The remaining 60,000 are supported by WFP in six marzes.

• School meals (hot meals, milk or fortified fruit bars) are provided five days a week over the 180-day school year.  The daily food ration comprises of wheat flour, buckwheat, rice, pasta, vegetable oil, pulses with total of 700 kcal/day. Foods are used on an alternating or rotational basis to ensure nutritional variety. The base daily diet of the limited school milk pilot project (outside hot meal model) included 160 ml of hot milk and 60g of biscuits or buns. To ensure diversity of the diet, children will be provided with alternative food items including milk with cocoa, kefir, yogurt and juice.

• The programme included a food-for-work component that  provided family food (take-home) entitlements to 1,700 for school kitchen women helpers who were involved in the daily preparation of the meals and received a family food ration (estimated for five members per family) as compensation for their work preparing the meals. This measure ceased in 2014 when the porgramme was handed over to the Armenian Government that launched the use of cash or vouchers to pay for the kitchen helpers.

• Financial burden: a sum of AMD 140 from the state budget is daily allocated for each child. AMD 120 are allocated for food,  AMD 10 to pay kitchen helpers’ salaries, and AMD10 for other costs including implementation of sanitary norms, utility expenses and transportation.
• According to estimates, the resultant return of USD 7.1 for each dollar invested in school feeding in Armenia is significantly higher than the global average of USD 5.5.
• Shift to cash transfers enabled local retailers to increase their sales up to 10%.
• Job creation for school feed program for local people: cookers, farmers, creation of school canteen network.
• School directors enlarged the impact by developing school gardens to provide fresh vegetable and fruits. Some schools plan to build greenhouses for enhancing the sustainability of fresh food supply chain of their school feeding systems.
• On December 27, 2012 the Government of Armenia adopted the Concept of Sustainable School Feeding Program developed by the Ministry of Education of Armenia with the support of Russian experts (Governmental decision of 27 December 2012 № 52). In accordance with the Concept the Government of Armenia for the first time in modern history provides for in the budget about 3 million USD for the school feeding programme budgeting in 2013 – 2016. 
• The Sustainable School Feeding Development Strategy and Action plan were developed and adopted by the Government of Armenia Governmental decision of 22 August 2013 № 33.
• A national Inter-Ministerial Committee has been established to coordinate school feeding. At the beginning, it was chaired by the Deputy Minister of Education and set up of the senior officials and technical staff from the Ministries of Education and Science, Labour and Social Affairs, and Agriculture. In December 2013, the initial coordination body was replaced by a School Feeding Inter-Ministerial Committee (SFIMC) including the representatives of the Ministries of Education and Science, Territorial Management, Healthcare, and Agriculture, along with WFP and SIFI.
• According to the statement of the Minister of Education of Armenia, there are expectations to scale-up the program to cover all the marzes and include senior school children as well. Thus, the program will enlarge both horizontally and vertically.

Key lessons (positive and negative) that can be learned from your example and how gaps, obstacles and any other adverse conditions were addressed (approximately 600 words)

Success factors and lessons learned

• When integrating school feeding programs into national policy, the costs and uncertainty of programme success are the most important considerations. Diversification of funding from variety of sources can reduce risks and fear of failure at the beginning of the project. Hence, a pool of expertise and commitment (financial or in-kind) can reduce risk perception and increase the political willingness to start and get deeper in case of success. With this respect, even though the food purchase is the main cost driver in the school feeding programme, the Donor assistance is crucial and effective when it mitigates the heavy burden of high fixed cost related with initial stage of program such as renovation of facilities and installation of new equipment. Indeed, a key precondition for implementation of the program in schools was the existence of kitchens in proper state and maintenance of sanitary norms. The school feeding programme succeeded in development of basic documents in field of school feeding and modernization of feeding in educational institutions based on modern technologies of production and delivery of food.
• Ownership and control of those who are engaged it the program on daily basis is important for school feeding programme success. The project leadership by the Armenian Government appeared to be limited. Although the School Feeding Inter-Ministerial Committee has contributed to the development of a National School Feeding Strategy, it was not involved in hands-on school feeding activities. This limited its capacity to independently implement and monitor a national school feeding programme. Moreover, at the provincial level, in some cases local authorities also were not directly involved in the day-to-day operationalizing of school feeding activities even though the organization of school meals is under the control of councils of provinces. At the same time, head teachers play a major role in the implementation of school feeding activities at school level, in close cooperation with parent-teacher committees. All head teachers met by the evaluation team showed a high level of dedication to feeding schoolchildren but some of them claimed that it was an additional burden to their regular duties.
• An important lesson learned was to create a well-designed handover strategy for shifting from the international assistance to the nationally-owned school feeding program implementation with ensured sustained progress and quality in line with the country context and constraints. In the Armenian case, the first handover was done too early and expeditiously which required WFP to cover gaps in capacity and build support to the national school feeding programme throughout the year. The transition from donor implementer to government ownership is a complex process that takes many years to complete. A rapid exit from external assistance without the adequate mechanism in place can result in either the failure of the national school feeding programme or its poor quality. A long-term strategy with thoughtful transitional model is important for enhancing government capacity to finance and manage the programme. There would be a need for comprehensive trainings, the renovation of key infrastructure and furnishing the schools with modern kitchen equipment, the creation of synergies among partners, and proper monitoring assistance even beyond the transition stage to ensure a durable quality. Hence, the school feeding programme continues to be supported by WFP over the next few years before the government takes over full responsibility for school feeding activities.
• Stage-by-stage approach can be an effective strategy to follow when introducing a school feed program with a perspective of making it a large-scale nation-wide initiative. The transitional/pilot projects help to identify the drawbacks and benefits of preliminary plans, make adjustments and improve the immunity of the program operations and scale-up in the long-run.  Moreover, the success of the transition/pilot project strengthens the political will to take-over the program and find the ways of budget funding for the school feeding.  In the Armenian case the success of transition period and the lessoned learned from the failures reinforced the plans to expand the program not only vertically to other regions but also horizontally, by including the senior school students into the school meal program. But the financial sustainability may remain the key challenge for the scale-up.
• According to the plan from the National School Feeding Strategy, starting in 2016 the ‘Sustainable School Feeding Project’ will be scaled up and implemented by the Government with limited support from external donors. Considering the country’s recent economic situation and trends, and the demonstrated limited financial capacity of the Government regarding school feeding activities, there is a high uncertainty regarding the feasibility and sustainability of this plan up to 2021.

Further actions for improvement

• The key element of the school feeding program is the establishment of the school feeding operational mechanism as an interconnected system that impacts the development of agricultural and industrial complex, small business, health and education in food insecure countries. It is quite important that the donor and government assistance programs promote establishing sustainable national systems of local agricultural food production in quantity, variety and quality necessary for vulnerable population security. In the Armenian case, most of the food was purchased internationally in the donor country. The only exception was dried fruit, which was purchased locally for the production of fruit bars by a local Armenian company. Based on the this experience, a need was observed to introduce donor assistance reforms that would put more effort for promoting more local product use in their programs rather than importing the products. The school feed procurement projects need to incorporate more emphasis on integrating the local food systems throughout the whole food chain. Even though some attempts are done, they are not sufficient.  The donor assistance programs, especially the large ones, need to be better tailored with local development plans and modify their purchasing guidelines, for example, by imposing quotas for purchasing local products in their large-scale long-run projects, instead of importing them, especially in the case when the products are available locally. On the condition of long-term contracts local production capacities could be developed to provide sufficient volumes locally. This will reduce import and increase food security system nationwide.
• Regulations and/or guidelines can help to promote procurement from local small/holder farmers. For example, in Brazil, the School Feeding Law stipulates mandatory to use at least 30% of federal funds for the purchase of food from smallholder farmers. Smallholder farmers have very limited capacity to participate in catering bids, thus remaining, outside the procurement system. The school feed programs that have created local demand for food, can play important platform for settling and spreading the practice of pro-smallholder procurement on a small-scale. Among the key challenges in the efforts to increase locally grown component is the task of balancing the cost-efficient procurement with smallholder farmer involvement, and this is where the donor support can direct its efforts.

Sources and/ or additional background material (please provide weblinks when possible or send the material to [email protected])

1) WFP hands over the implementation of the School Feeding Program in Tavush province to the Government of Armenia. URL: http://www.un.am/en/news/625

2) Meal Deal: Education minister calls for continuation, expansion of school feeding program in Armenia. URL: https://www.armenianow.com/en/society/education/2016/05/25/armenia-educ…

3) Food Security and the School Feeding System: experience of the Russian Federation. URL: http://old.minfin.ru/en/financial_affairs/Dev_Assis/concept_rus/index.p…