School meals: Breaking the cycle of hunger and poverty

This capstone project explores the potential for community enhancement and decreased malnutrition in children through contextually appropriate school feeding programs (SFPs). SFPs have the ability to promote immediate economic development and community building, as well as lasting autonomy, security, gender equality, and healthier, more educated children. The team identifies five alternative delivery methods that could be employed to provide school meals. System evaluation methods are used to identify key factors for effective and contextually appropriate initiatives to facilitate effective school feeding for pre-primary and primary school children. These evaluation criteria include: (1) academic success measured by school attendance, retention, and achievement, (2) nutrition measured by rate of stunting and other indicators of malnutrition as well as nutrition education, and (3) community development measured by participation rates by local farmers and related food service providers. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs, test locations are chosen to represent the four major, relevant socioeconomic regions: high-income urban, high-income rural, low-income urban, and low-income rural. In the United States, school counties in Chicago and Georgia are investigated as high-income urban and rural representatives, and communities in Haiti and Uganda are investigated as low-income urban and rural representatives, respectively. Within each region, a specific program is evaluated for growth in the designated metrics. Based on statistical and qualitative findings, conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of various programs in their respective socioeconomic regions, and further recommendations for program implementation are given.