A comprehensive and standardized dataset on school feeding activities worldwide: The Global Survey of School Meal...

School meal programs-in which students receive meals, snacks, or take-home rations-reach over 400 million children throughout the world. They aim to address multiple objectives, most commonly to improve children's nutrition and health and to meet education goals by facilitating and incentivizing children's school attendance and learning. Yet despite their prevalence and evidence of impact, the data available on large-scale school meal programs have historically been fragmented and inconsistent, making it difficult to discern trends over time or compare school meal activities across different settings. Advocates, policy makers, analysts, and practitioners have all confronted the same challenge: a scarcity of comprehensive and standardized information on school meal programs. The Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF)-supported by an array of international partners and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-has sought to address this oversight through the Global Survey of School Meal Programs©. The Global Survey was launched in 2019 to gather information about school meal programs from national governments in every country in a standardized manner, and it has been repeated every 2-3 years. The survey is designed to be completed by a country "focal point" who is officially appointed by their government to liaise with the necessary entities to gather information for the survey and government approval for the information submitted. This survey dataset spans a broad set of topics of relevance to school feeding, including coverage/reach, targeting of beneficiaries, menu composition, food procurement and distribution, sources of funding, program governance, links to local agriculture and the private sector, and health and sanitation complementary services. It also tracks impacts over time, including the effects of shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, to support comparison across countries, inform investments, and enable research and advocacy. The dataset enriches the broader literature on school feeding and provides a starting point for further research on this topic.