The Global Child Nutrition Foundation implements the world's only international survey of school meal programs. Founded by Gene White MS SNS decades ago, GCNF creates global school lunch partnerships between schools, governments and farmers to create sustainable school feeding programs. The goal of this program is to provide RDNs and NDTRs insight into the extensive database and global impact of school lunch sustainable programs created by the GCNF.
One can view data from over 165 countries and more than 200 separate school programs on their website. Speakers will highlight the December 2024 biannual forum held in Osaka Japan and share data from the most recent 2025 global survey.
This session will cover key lessons: 1) what it takes to design and implement a complex global survey (including insight into what works and what does not), 2) what we are learning from the survey which is of particular interest to RDN and NDTR?s in the US in setting up and implementing their own programs with cultural integrity, 3) logistic survey and program challenges encountered (ethical, communication, quality control), and 4) the research and scholarship opportunities that such a trove of data presents.