 When I grow up I want to be a teacher. I want to become a vet. To be a doctor when I grow up. I want to become a lawyer. Change the world! Welcome to Guyana. We're very happy to have you here, and we're really excited to tell you about our FMM funded project. We've been working very hard with our valued partners and collaborators, the ministries of education, human services and social protection, and the Ministry of Agriculture. We're extremely grateful to be part of this program, and this has helped us to achieve some very exciting results this year. We focused here on the school feeding program in Guyana, and our job was to create a case study to show off or to showcase how farmers' livelihoods can be enhanced and simultaneously providing improved and sustained nutrition to school-aged children. We've completed our assessment of the national school feeding programs. We have helped the Ministry of Education to develop the pillars of a school feeding policy going forward. We have designed a pilot project for implementing our linkage between school feeding and farmers, small farmers. We have assessed over 300 small farmers to help them to become ready to participate in the school feeding program. I really want to thank all of the partners and the collaborators who we have worked with these past few months to collect all of this data and to do these studies. It tells a very compelling story about opportunities for improving lifelong healthy eating. We are now interested and we are as excited as the rest of our partners to move to the next stage from study to action. Your continued support is needed to ensure that we have the capability to scale up the results we have. Thank you for your collaboration. Thank you for visiting Guyana and we look forward to seeing you in person or virtually very soon. From beautiful Guyana everyone, my name is Chandel Rodriguez and in turn attached to the FAO Guyana office. Today, I am happy to tell you all about the school feeding sub-program implementation in Guyana. Are you ready? Let's go. The post COVID-19 world, school feeding programs are even more of a priority because they help countries to build a healthy and educated population while supporting local economic development. Together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, flexible multi-parter mechanism, Guyana is strengthening the linkages between school feeding programs and smallholder farmers in rural and hinterland communities throughout the country. As part of our efforts to provide safe and nutritious food for all, Guyana has adopted measures to consolidate its national school feeding program. We are strengthening the linkages and synergies between consumers and food producers so as to deliver safe, healthy and nutritious school meals. This will also help provide small farmers with a guaranteed market for a portion of their produce. Today, we are joining to Barima Waini Region 1, the most northwestern hinterland region of Guyana. We are here today with the head teacher of the Santa Rosa Primary School located in Maruka Sub-District. Miss, can you tell us how the school feeding program is supporting the school and how meals are provided in your school? Good morning, my name is Miss Cheryl Atkinson. I am a teacher of Santa Rosa Primary School. This primary school has the largest enrollment in the sub-region with a total of 620 pupils. We have been benefiting from this feeding program for several years now. We have seen improvement in pupils' attendance and functionality, increased level of performance at national and internal assessment. Our local businesses and farmers are also benefiting because the kitchen, fortresses, groceries, meat and fish, fresh fruits and vegetables. Most food items are being sold from the community. The cooks are also given a stipend which boosts the income to provide for their families. Parents are also saving since they don't have to buy lunch for their children like before. The quality of the food is wholesome and nourishing. The pupils are provided with a balanced diet. I can safely say the feeding program is a beneficial venture which goes a long way and I am very grateful to the Ministry of Education for that. Thank you. Now we turn our attention to pupils of the Santa Rosa Primary School. Listen to their story. Hello, my name is Kleiner Jepes. I attend the Santa Rosa Primary School in Region 1. Many schools across the country have been benefiting from the Ministry of Education School feeding program. My school is one of them. Since this program started, it is really beneficial to us. Nutritional food are offered. We eat them comfort and so many more benefits. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. My name is Justin Lewis. I reside at Kamakamoroko which is located in Region 1. I attend the Santa Rosa Primary School. From home, I normally walk about two and a half miles to get to school with my cousin every day. Sometimes we are picked up by the bus and are dropped off safely to school. Our school feeding program provides a delicious meal for all school children every day. They give us fruit juice daily with a variety of nutritious foods making it a balanced diet. Since I am in Grade 6, preparing for my National Grade 6 exam, I need a lot of energy and nutrients to keep me working hard. Our school feeding program feels this need perfectly. Therefore, I wish to thank the school feeding program for their service because we all benefit. I wish the service would continue for us and the many peoples of the future. Thank you. There are con-class other stories of the benefits and successes of the school feeding program in Guyana. And so, even at the highest level, there is a national drive to ensure school meals continue and, more importantly, are linked with farmers. My name is Christina James and I am the chairperson for the Buckeye Women's School. We are situated in Mabuma, the region of Guyana. And we are agro-processing foods. So, we produce cassava, cocoa, coffee, cashewnuts. And we also have a shape host that we produce season and some vegetables. We have been supplying the schools with our locally made cassava bread and our cashews, our season, and they were able to purchase some vegetables as well from us. That's been a great help to the group towards marketing our product. The school feeding program has benefited me as well as my grandchildren, also members of the community. And some of the women from the group who are farmers, they were able to benefit from the feeding program as well. Thank you to the government of Guyana for championing local effort to nourish our children's one local economy at a time. Thank you FMM Resource Partners. We hope you enjoy discovering the school feeding subprogram in Guyana.