Dear friends,
This month’s newsletter focuses on children.
World Vision’s Dana Buzducea, in an op-ed for the Alliance, puts it directly: eliminating child hunger is a political obligation, not a policy afterthought. The fact that 181 million children under five still live in severe food poverty is not a technical problem awaiting a solution. The solutions exist. What we need to scale up is the sustained political will to prioritize them—and the coordinated support to help governments deliver at scale.
School meals are one of the most effective tools we have. They reach children where they are, improve attendance and learning outcomes, and can reshape local food systems when linked to procurement from smallholder farmers. This month we highlight two significant examples in the Policy Basket: India’s PM-POSHAN, which serves over 116 million children daily with hot, cooked meals, and Haiti’s National School Canteen Programme, which has reached over 850.000 children even amid severe fragility. These are not marginal experiments. They are national-scale programmes that other governments can study, adapt, and implement.
Betty Kibaara from the Rockefeller Foundation reminds us that school meals can do more than feed children. By integrating pulses—beans, lentils, chickpeas—into these programmes, governments can improve nutrition while creating predictable demand for climate-smart, locally grown crops.
The School Meals Accelerator launched by Rockefeller with Germany’s BMZ, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and WFP—backed by over $80 million—is designed to help governments reach an additional 100 million children by 2030. The Accelerator will work closely with the Support Mechanism to help committed countries expand their school meals programmes.
The challenges are real. But so are the programmes we are building from.
Looking ahead, the Third Board of Champions will meet on 11-12 May 2026 in the context of the OECD Conference on the Future of Development Co-operation. The framing is candid: we are operating in a changing aid environment, with budgets under pressure and competing demands multiplying. The meeting will address how the Alliance responds to these constraints while staying focused on delivery. We will need honest discussions about what is possible, what needs to adjust, and how members can continue to align behind country-led priorities even as the landscape shifts.
Renato D. Godinho
Director, Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty
Support Mechanism
