School Feeding Handbook
With this Handbook, our aims are to provide a unique insight into the many positive benefits that school feeding programmes are bringing to children and communities worldwide and how they have played a key role in improving health and education for school children. We also share many examples of school feeding programmes with impact data and best practices when it comes to organisation and implementation of these programmes. Quite often these programmes also result in local agriculture development, where we support small holder farmers with access to market.
The first school milk programme
The first school milk programme using Tetra Pak packages was introduced in Mexico in 1962 in collaboration with the National System for Integral Family Development and is still reaching millions of children today. However, our involvement with developing global school feeding and nutrition programmes began even earlier than that, in 1951. Both Tetra Pak and Tetra Laval Food for Development continue to play a significant role in the field, actively supporting our customers and working in collaboration with governments, UN agencies, and NGOs. We regularly share global best practice and provide technical assistance in the evaluation and implementation of school feeding programmes, food safety and quality controls, product development, distribution, and environmental education activities in schools. Read more about Food for Development.
More than 68 million children in 56 countries now receive milk or other fortified beverages in Tetra Pak packages in schools. Through our global experiences, we have seen how effective sustainable school feeding programmes can be in improving nutrition and education for vulnerable groups.
Today, the growing global population faces many challenges, including hunger, food insecurity, malnutrition and inefficient agriculture. We believe the most effective way to tackle global challenges related to food security and nutrition is to build sustainable food value chains, working in partnership with our stakeholders. Partnership and collaboration is absolutely key to our approach, and to ensuring that programmes are sustainable and continue to improve health and education for vulnerable children over the long term.
Increasing access to safe food
School feeding programmes can play a very important role in addressing such challenges. As well as being a proven means of improving health and promoting better educational outcomes, these programmes are helping to support the development of sustainable food value chains and reducing food losses and food waste. As such, they are making a major contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
School feeding and the role of Tetra Pak
Tetra Pak has demonstrated the value to society and individuals of participation in school feeding and nutrition programmes since 1962, when the first school milk programme using Tetra Pak packages was introduced. Globally, more than 68 million children in 56 countries receive milk or other nutritious beverages in Tetra Pak packages in their schools.