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Russia to allocate $ 10 million for school meals in Kyrgyzstan

Russia will provide Kyrgyzstan with a grant of $ 10 million to expand the hot school meals program. The office of the UN World Food Program in the Kyrgyz Republic reported.

According to it, over the next five years, more than a half of the country’s primary schools will be covered with hot meals. With the support of Russia, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic and WFP will continue to improve the quality of nutrition of primary school students, promoting the development of regions through support of local agricultural producers.

In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science and WFP launched a program to optimize school meals in the country thanks to Russia’s financial support of $ 12 million. The main goal of the pilot program, which covered more than 400,000 primary school students, was to improve the quality of school meals in the country.

As of today, the school nutrition program covers 114,000 primary school students in 335 schools across the country.

Thanks to new funding from Russia, 175,000 students will receive hot meals in the next five years in more than 500 schools in remote rural regions.

«We aim to ensure that all primary school-aged children in the Kyrgyz Republic have access to safe and nutritious food all year round,» said WFP Kyrgyz Republic Country Director Andrea Bagnoli. «School meals improve the learning environment for young children so they can achieve better results, paving the way for increased economic productivity in the future.»

With new funding, WFP will continue investing in renovating canteens, providing schools with kitchen equipment, training school chefs and helping schools establish vegetable gardens to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables.

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