By KYIV. Nov 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The UN World Food Program has expanded support for Ukrainian schools and will finance daily lunches for more than 60,000 children in 420 schools across the country, First Lady Olena Zelenska has said.
“Every child should receive a healthy and nutritious lunch every day at school – I want to remind you of this goal of our school nutrition reform,” she said on Facebook.
Zelenska recalled that last year 58 schools in Kyiv region received such support. Then the program compensated 50% of the cost of lunch, which made it possible to increase the number of students receiving hot meals by 2,000 and generally improve the quality of these lunches.
According to her information, in 2023, thanks to funding from the French government and private donors, the program was expanded to another ten regions. During the 2023-2024 academic year, it will finance 30% of daily hot lunches for students in grades one to four in schools in Kyiv, Lviv, Zakarpattia, Ternopil, Khmelnytsky, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Poltava regions of Ukraine.
UN program specialists took into account a number of criteria, including the number of internally displaced students.
“More than 223,000 children in Ukraine now have this status, belong to preferential categories and receive hot meals for free. Therefore, support from the UN program will be a powerful aid to the state seeking to fulfil this obligation one hundred percent,” the first lady said.
Zelenska thanked international partners for helping Ukrainian children.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the Strategy for reforming the school nutrition system for 2023-2027.
