Good Examples | Research areas

Mission

To document, in collaboration with national teams, how school meal programmes are designed, organized, financed, and monitored. To this end, case studies are developed to highlight the success factors and good practices in implementing large-scale and sustainable national programmes.

Through its various activities, the CoP contributes to:

Expanding the global academic network of the Research Consortium;
Capitalizing on lessons learned from the most long-standing and robust programmes, notably those in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa;
Using solution science to identify smart ideas implemented by stakeholders, particularly in OECD member countries;
Collaborating with government partners to establish an enabling environment and strong operational structures, based on good practices observed in well-established programmes reaching a large number of children.

Why?

School meal programmes are among the most widespread social interventions globally, yet there is limited consistent documentation on how they are structured, financed, and monitored. The Good Examples Community of Practice (CoP) aims to build a global picture of how these programmes function in different economic, political, and cultural contexts. This helps guide effective scale-up towards the Coalition’s goal: ensuring every child has access to a nutritious meal at school.

Case studies also support national planning. In Ukraine, for example, the Good Examples case study informed the national School Nutrition Reform strategy to reach vulnerable children during the conflict.

How?

The case studies are independently produced by local teams and present the history of school meal programmes, their implementation, the related public policies, as well as their funding mechanisms, monitoring systems and potential multisectoral impacts. These documents are available in multiple languages, concise, easy to read, and freely accessible on this website.

To support this process, the CoP hosts regional case study writing workshops for country authors and runs regular online webinars for sharing final case studies with a global audience.