Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to greet this first Ministerial Meeting of the School Meals Coalition.  

The Secretary-General and I appreciate the leadership of the Governments of Finland and France for building and sustaining the Coalition.

And we commend the governments of Benin, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and the African Union and the European Union for their support.

This First Ministerial Meeting will help lift the momentum of this multi-networked coalition, reflecting the importance of creating a space dedicated to children’s education, health, stability and well-being at schools, through school meal programmes.

Your efforts are helping to ensure that this transformative school programme supports local agriculture and markets while making societies more resilient and empowered, by reaching children, while benefitting farmers, women and girls, entrepreneurs and communities across the world.

The School Meals Coalition was launched by 73 governments during the Food Systems Summit.

And several member States reiterated their commitment to school meals in their statements at the recent Transforming Education Summit.

We now have a global initiative with clear and unequivocal consensus.

School meals programmes connect several sectors, including education, health, agriculture and social protection, and they have the potential to accelerate gender responsive action across multiple SDGs.

This is what makes this Coalition such a valuable platform and instrumental to grapple with local challenges linked to energy and water insecurity, impacts of   droughts, the rising cost of living, in addition to the prevalent food crisis.

Now we must scale-up these integrated, sustainable school meals programmes, including improving the quality and diversity of nutrients, because they can help tackle the food and health crises and the education crisis simultaneously.

They can also help us stabilize communities and promote social cohesion.

To achieve the Coalition's goals, we need an increase in domestic financing, particularly in lower-middle-income countries. I congratulate the significant investments made by Benin, Honduras and Rwanda since last year, which demonstrate what is possible.

In addition, robust donor support is required to help low-income countries reach self-reliance.

We count on the strategic partners and donors of the Coalition to provide innovative solutions to the existing financing gaps.

Together with the United Nations System, the Secretary-General and I stand ready to work with you all to take stock of progress ahead of next year’s SDG Summit and strengthen these interventions as we head toward 2030.

As we look toward the future we want for children, I remain hopeful that the spirit of collaboration and collective action of this group of member States and broad stakeholders will ensure that the Coalition’s efforts are more than the sum of its parts.

I wish you a successful and productive meeting.