Among participants are: representatives of the ministries and departments of Tajikistan which are members of Intersectoral coordination council on school feeding issues, representatives of hukumats, heads of regional departments of education and health care, WFP Country Director in Tajikistan Paolo Mattei, President of Social and Industrial Foodservice Institute Vladimir Chernigov.
The aim of the Presentation was to introduce main provisions of the Strategy, its implementation phases and also to call on participants of the process for cooperation for school feeding system development in the country.
Since 1999 the Sсhool Feeding Programme in the Republic of Tajikistan is carried out by UN WFP. Thanks to their work 395 thousand primary school students of 2000 schools receive their hot meals every day during school year.
Since 2013 in Tajikistan the strategic and program documents regulating the sphere of school feeding system are developed to help the Government start the National School Feeding Programme and provide as much students as possible with hot meals. As a result in September, 2017 the Government accepted the Sustainable School Feeding Strategy for the period until 2027.
For practical working off of the development and ensuring sustainable school feeding issues included in the Strategy the Action plan for implementation of pilot projects was developed and approved.
50 schools became participants of these projects: 35 schools of Khatlon Region, 15 schools of the city of Rogun and areas Rasht, Nurabad, Tadzhikobad, Lakhsh.
Thanks to technical assistance of Social and Industrial Foodservice Institute by the end of August these schools will receive all necessary equipment and methodological base for the organization of hot school meals for primary school children.
During the presentation special attention was paid to questions of necessary sanitary conditions of school canteens and personal hygiene of students — important components of school feeding and children health in general.
For the effective coordination of the Strategy phases and the Action plan implementation it was offered to create Coordinating body on school feeding issues at the level of the cities and republic regions. Assistance to this initiative will be rendered by members of Intersectoral coordination council on school feeding issues.
"In any country school feeding is cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary question demanding joint and collective work of different participants and representatives of departments. Therefore we hope for your active participation in implementation of the directions and actions of the Strategy. Let's use the best efforts for providing children — the most vulnerable and needing our protection and support part of the population — healthy, qualitative and safe food" — addressed the participants Vladimir Chernigov.