 Cooks within the local school feeding program have been cooking up a storm, owning their culinary skills to make meals even more appetizing and nutritious for the young ones within the local education system. The challenges experienced locally in achieving this mandate include a lack of variety and diversification in the menus provided at schools, heavy reliance on processed imported foods, limited number of school gardens to support school meals, and a lack of infrastructure and equipment. These challenges, according to nutrition consultant with the FAO, Uthalia Filgens, are being tackled head-on by this Mexico-Caricom FAO-funded Cooperation for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in the Caribbean project. She says the Sustainable School Feeding Initiative is an essential element under this project. The whole goal is to have all the schools have uniform menus and the menus will include a vegan option and also it will have at least three options per day so the cooks can choose from those options and therefore the children will have variety in what they eat and they will not be getting all the foods or everything every time the same thing. We also want to look at presentation that's very important especially for children they want to see their food pretty so we're looking at color, texture, variety of those things in order to ensure that our children eat when they are giving the food and the food does not go to waste. The school feeding program in St Lucia and indeed the Caribbean region have long been recognized as an important tool in the facilitation of learning especially for poor and vulnerable school children. Miss Filgen says when children's stomachs are satisfied then their minds are nourished sufficiently to accept learning. Tasting sessions performed by school children themselves are drawing honest opinions which will be used to facilitate adjustments to meals. What we've noticed is that a lot of our children are not getting a healthy diet is because parents are not educated even some of our cooks did not to show about education in nutrition so therefore we want to make that holistic so we're also having the parents we're having a part where the parents will be educated on how to cook for the children even the teachers will be included in that so that everybody are on the same page we're all singing from the same hymn book so we know that education nutrition means that and we also educate people on the nutrition policy for St Lucia. The program continues to stress on utilizing products grown locally providing variety in meal preparation while at the same time supporting the local market. So they will know how to make a dish with almost every local produce okay and it's very important that we use what we have because we want to include the farmers the farmers are also part of this project we're trying to get our foods sourced from the farmers so we were trying to boost the socioeconomic status of the of the communities by including them in the in this project. The Food and Agriculture Organization is also collaborating with the Ministry of Health and Wellness to finalize a health and nutrition policy for schools in order to promote within the school and home circles the requirements for healthy habits. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education Sustainable Development Innovation Science Technology and Vocational Training I am Chris Satney reporting.