On the 18th and 19th of September 2025, the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact joined the Second Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition, hosted in the City of Fortaleza, under the high patronage of the President of Brazil, H.E. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
This important occasion brought together leaders from Member States, regional bodies, and partners, as well as parliamentarians and representatives of cities.
The SMC Global Summit’s agenda was very rich, covering a variety of themes from the launch of the new edition of the State of School Feeding Worldwide Report, to dialogues between Ministers and partners, and the showcase of the new national commitments from over 40 governments.
The outcome statement of the 2nd Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition can be read here.
At the first SMC Global Summit, hosted in the city of Paris, France, in 2023, the MUFPP launched the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative. To showcase the progress of the Initiative up to date, the MUFPP organized a plenary session on the 19th of September 2025, with the title “The power of cities and municipalities: driving innovation and accountability at local levels”.
During the session it was highlighted the important contribution by the MUFPP to the Global Database and the new State of School Feeding, with the development of the first ever database of urban food systems worldwide. Along with an overview of the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative, key data were highlighted from participating cities, with a focus on the case study of Milan and a detailed map exploring innovations across the first cohort of Champion Mayors, namely Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Montpellier, Nairobi, São Paulo and Seoul.
The following presentation of the new case study on the City of Milan showed the first MUFPP’s flagship case study, developed together with the Research Consortium of the School Meals Coalition. This is the starting point of a series of case studies that the MUFPP envision to extend to other Champion Mayors and flagship cities within the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative. Together with this, other key tools presented have been developed thanks to the “Spreading Experiences and Knowledge on School Meals Programmes in ASEAN Cities” Summer School and with the training and technical support to officers through the development of Feasibility Studies for six ASEAN cities.
The second segment of the session was dedicated to the contribution from H.E. Evandro Sá Barreto Leitão, Mayor of Fortaleza, and Ms. Darklane Rodrigues, Secretary of Food and Nutritional Security, representing the City of Belo Horizonte.
Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte were not only representing Brazil as the hosting country, but also one of the most advanced school meals programmes in the world, thanks to the Mayors at the forefront who provide healthy meals every day.
H.E. Evandro Sá Barreto Leitão, Mayor of Fortaleza, outlined the new school meals service of the city, just relaunched in August, starting with the improvement of the conditions of the environment where students eat their meals. The whole menu was reformulated in order to provide healthy meals, also valuing Brazil’s culture. The menu changes every day, supplied from short supply farmers to support the local economy. A significant programme they are also part of is “Ceará Sem Fome” (Ceará without hunger), the Ceará State Government’s programme that bring healthy food to the tables of Ceará residents living in extreme poverty. Thanks to this programme, 30,000 people have been lifted out from poverty, and over 50% of their population pre-registered and was provided with food aid. The Mayor of Fortaleza emphasized how they want to implement these policies especially dedicated to school meals. In particular, they not only give healthy meals to the students, but the beneficiaries include all the staff of the school, and the feedback from the population has been very positive. In this, he acknowledges the key responsibility of Mayors in enabling healthy meals available to all the students and beyond.
Food security is a concrete challenge also in Belo Horizonte, a city that is member of the current MUFPP Steering Committee. As Ms. Darklane Rodrigues, Secretary of Food and Nutritional Security, explained, they assessed and made an evaluation about the hunger-related situation within the city, and the data collected demonstrated that the challenges faced by the most vulnerable families of Belo Horizonte were even more exacerbated during collective holidays period, because of school closing leading students without have access to up to 5 meals a day. Thus, they decided to design a strategy called “Cesta nas Férias” Program: a food basket, planned together with a group of nutritionists to ensure the supply of healthy food, distributed to families in need during the two periods of holiday break from school, in July and between the end of December and beginning of January. With this system, the City of Belo Horizonte was able to reach more than 80% of the families in underprivileged and low-income families.
These two examples show clearly how Mayors are able to act to provide support to citizens, having the sense of what is happening in their cities and what is more needed.
To conclude the session, the Director of the MUFPP, Filippo Gavazzeni, has confirmed MUFPP’s commitment to keep progressing with the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative, by: developing new case studies on cities with the Research Consortium; by continuing to enrich the School Meals Coalition’s database including more details in collaboration with the Data and Monitoring Initiative; by providing support to the ASEAN cities that received the feasibility studies and mobilizing fundings to step in the implementation phase; by delivering executive trainings and by organizing a new National Dialogue in Indonesia hosted by the Mayor of Semarang. Finally, based on the practices received at the Milan Pact Awards 2025, a new cohort of Champion Mayors will be announced at the upcoming MUFPP Global Forum.
The session ended with two important moments. First, Fortaleza was officially welcomed in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact through the signature of its Mayor H.E. Evandro Sá Barreto Leitão. Second, the final remarks were delivered by H.E. Fernanda Pacobahyba, President of Brazil’s National Fund for Educational Development (FNDE).
H.E. Fernanda Pacobahyba acknowledged the visionary decision taken by the co-chairs of the School Meals Coalition in 2023 to create the Cities Feeding the Future Initiative, recognizing how Mayors are in a privileged position to understand the needs of citizens. She recalls their role as local leaders with a great power of transformation, being so close to the population and having the concrete possibility of transforming people’s lives. She congratulated Fortaleza for joining the MUFPP, reminding the audience about the need to collaborate between national and municipality level: Brazil has invested a lot in the construction of these bridges, as only through collaboration with Mayors it is possible to speed up and accelerate school meals implementation and improvements worldwide.
