Nourishing bodies and minds
Farmers, families, schools work together to boost child nutrition.
A teacher with children in the medicinal garden. Plants here include peppermint, chamomile, basil and mint. (© Pep Bonet / NOOR for FAO)
“I feel very proud of our school garden and I would like for every school to have one.”
Dulce María Díaz Pérez is 12 years old and loves to read. She also likes to garden. Dulce, a sixth-grade student in Tejutla, San Marcos, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, is learning about sustainable farming, nutrition and more, through the backyard garden at her school.
“The school garden is a space where we can learn many things,” Dulce says.
Dulce’s school garden is part of a nationwide nutrition-sensitive school feeding initiative which links schools, local family farmers and parents associations to provide nutritious and varied meals to school children across the country. It follows the Sustainable Healthy Schools model from the Brazil-FAO International and South-South Cooperation Programme in the region and was first introduced in Guatemala in 2014.
These initiatives have been enhanced by Guatemala’s first-ever school-feeding law, which came into effect in 2018 following efforts made by the Guatemalan Chapter of the Parliamentary Front against Hunger and FAO. This achievement was the result of significant inter-sectorial and institutional coordination, consensus-building with key sectors, and evidence-based advocacy.
“Before this project started we had to queue for a long time to get food, and the meals or snacks were repetitive and not that healthy. Now they are more varied, more nutritious, and more delicious.”