School cooks in Belize are giving students a healthy start
School cooks from seven schools in Belize are learning how to improve school menus and food safety for students.
Healthy school meals are pivotal in ensuring the nutrition of students and in helping them to stay focused, energized and ready to learn. For this reason, the Resilient School Feeding Program sub-project in collaboration with the Healthy Start School Feeding program of the Government of Belize recently welcomed 32 cooks, teachers and principals from seven primary schools to engage them in hands-on learning sessions.
Cooks from the Biscayne, Santa Martha, Chan Chen, San Joaquin, Lucky Strike, Guinea Grass, and St. Peter’s Anglican Primary Schools participated in theoretical and practical skills training covering topics such as healthy menus and food safety. Participants were able to demonstrate their food safety techniques while they cooked recipes from the school feeding menu that is being developed under the project. Participants were also taught how to use menus to plan the school’s grocery lists, including better predictions of farm product needs, to improve relations with local farmers.
The Resilient School Feeding program is one of three sub-projects of the Mexico-CARICOM-FAO Initiative “Cooperation for adaptation and resilience to climate change in the Caribbean,” funded by the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), in collaboration with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) secretariat and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The project follows the sustainable school feeding model for the FAO-Brazil Technical Cooperation and other FAO frameworks (including the Home Grown School Feeding Framework) with the leadership of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise. It seeks to promote the provision of healthy diets, while creating linkages with local farmers. Among others, it supports the improvement of kitchen facilities in selected primary schools in Belize, and provides education in nutrition and healthy meals to staff and students. The project also aims to provide assistance for school gardens, and increase the capacity of small farmers and their organizations to participate in the Government’s national Healthy Start feeding program, by linking small producers to schools in their community.
FAO Representative for Belize, Dr Crispim Moreira, remarked that the project offers an opportunity to build the capacity of schools to deliver healthier meal choices to students using local produce whilst also ensuring proper food safety practices. He added that these were two areas that FAO and its partners were keen on supporting in order to promote food security.
Activities for the Resilient School Feeding program in Belize are ongoing. Online training in March gave participants a food safety refresh and was led by Ms. Sanchez-Marin, Senior Public Health Inspector. Participants received an overview of the basics in child nutrition and an introduction to healthy school feeding recipes from Nutritionist Doris Sutherland. The project has also conducted stakeholder sessions to examine how the needs of small farmers can best be addressed in the sub-project and beyond.