Launched in October 2023 at the First Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition in Paris, the Cities Feeding the Future initiative is designed to support cities in their responsibility to implement school meal programs while fostering connections between local and national governments. The initiative is led by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP).
The School Meals Coalition (SCM) is an international network featuring over 105 governments, 140+ partners, and 6 regional bodies, all working together with the aim of improving and scaling up school meal programs to ensure that every child has access to healthy, nutritious meals in school by 2030. Through the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative, the SMC aims to effectively align the efforts and commitments of its member states, facilitating successful implementation at the city level.
The Initiative’s Objectives
Cities Feeding the Future focuses on three main objectives:
- Empowering cities: Assisting cities in implementing effective school meal programmes.
- Knowledge sharing: Facilitating the exchange of best practices among cities and global actors.
- Supporting local decision-making processes: Assisting cities in making informed decisions about school meal programmes.
Areas of Action
To achieve these goals, the initiative focuses on three main areas of action:
- Advocacy: Identifying champion mayors and organizing national dialogues to promote advocacy actions regarding the importance of implementing school meals and highlighting best practices worldwide (through events, and technical field visits).
- Best Practices: Creating an urban database to collect examples of excellence in school meal programmes and facilitate the exchange of best practices, highlighting different approaches (through technical workshops).
- Research: Supporting cities with specific learning needs to co-design new school meal programmes or improve existing ones (supporting the development of feasibility studies).
Key Initiatives
So far, the Cities Feeding the Future initiative, has carried out several significant projects, including:
- Development of Feasibility Studies on school meals programmes for selected cities with the technical support of Milano Ristorazione
- Organization of the session “School Meals as Food Policy Catalysts in ASEAN Cities” organised at Expo Osaka 2025 in July 2025
- Participation in the 2nd Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition in Fortaleza with the hosting of the session “The power of cities and municipalities: driving innovation and accountability at local levels” in September 2025
- Organization of a School Meals Coalition-focused plenary during the MUFPP Global Forum in October 2025
- Moreover, significant collaborations with other Initiatives of the School Meals Coalition have been carried out, such as: the contribution to the State of School Feeding Worldwide 2024 publication with city-led solutions and innovation, the enrichment of the Data and Monitoring Initiative’s Global Database on school meals with data from MUFPP cities and the new City Case Study on the City of Milan published in collaboration with the Research Consortium.