Good practices, challenges and opportunities for innovation, learning and scaling up

The RBAs have jointly committed to enhanced partnerships, as a key building block in the UN reform Agenda. This includes coordinated support to selected flagship initiatives, such as integrated School Meals Programmes (SMPs) for multiple impacts on SDG2 and the broader Agenda 2030. As part of this plan and in line with the Decade of Action for Nutrition, bolstering SSTC as an instrument for policy learning and improvement, through to the technical expertise brought by the Brazilian Centre of Excellence, is key to achieve the goals set by the SDGs.

SMPs constitute the most common scheme of social safety net, benefiting 368 million children around the world, with investments exceeding US$ 75bn a year. Evidence shows SMPs' contributions to the SDGs beyond SDG2; SMs are in fact increasingly being leveraged by Governments and development actors as interventions that contribute to human development outcomes that are critical in supporting the longer-term resilience of vulnerable households to seasonal, economic and climate-related shocks. In addressing the root causes of hunger, they are a catalyst for wider social and economic stabilization, strengthening resilience and providing opportunities for more inclusive development pathways and social stability, as the successful and extensive experience in the MENA region demonstrated. Within SMPs, the innovative and cross-cutting HGSF model offers multiple direct benefits and spillover effects on food systems and healthy diets through increased demand for local agricultural products, improved smallholders market access, diet diversification, nutrition, and education.

In light of the strong contribution of SMPs to Agenda 2030, an increased call by donors and development actors to use evaluation findings to improve decision making for policy formulation and course-correct programme implementation was observed. To increase the sustainability of SMPs, many innovative approaches have been successfully implemented: for instance, a Resource Framework on HGSF was recently completed following a multi-stakeholder collaboration between the RBAs and a wide range of partners, including NEPAD/AU, WFP Center of Excellence Against Hunger in Brazil, Global Child Nutrition Forum, and Partnership for Child Development.
Nevertheless, the overall coverage and evidence generation around SMPs and its innovative approaches is not yet at a scale commensurate with the SDGs ambitions. Consequently, there is a need for the RBAs to pursue a more proactive and systemic course of action to address:

(a) policy coherence and national capacity building, including national evaluation capacity development; (b) cross-sectoral integration to adequately measure results and scale-up interventions; as well as (c) partnerships, knowledge and resources for replication, adaptation and expansion of successful models of interventions.