School cafeterias could hold the winning ingredients in the struggle to break down the cycle of inter-generationally transmitted poverty, a research report conducted last year by Bogaziçi University’s Social Policy Forum suggested.

According to the report entitled, “Is it possible to provide free lunch at primary public schools?” global statistics paint a grim picture of the situation for children in Turkey living beneath the breadline. One in every four children in Turkey lives in poverty and despite the fact that Turkey has the 16th largest economy in the world, the country ranks bottom amongst the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The institutionalization of free lunch programs in countries worldwide has become an increasing phenomenon over the course of the past decade. From community driven grassroots schemes in rural villages in Mali and legislative protection of school feeding programs in India, the provision of free meals to children who need them has become increasingly recognized as an effective social policy tool for supporting vulnerable and poor populations.
Turkey not doing enough for children
Speaking in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman, project co-researcher Dr. Aysen Candas from Bogaziçi University’s Department of Political Science and International Relations, said that such figures indicate that Turkey is not doing enough to address its childrens’ and accordingly, its own future. “Poverty as a form of injustice manifests itself as destiny only when its outcomes are translated into other areas where ‘money’ should be irrelevant, such as access to education and health,” she said.
Following the global food, fuel and financial crises of the past decade, such programs, Candas explained, have increasingly been used as social protection mechanisms due to their potential for both short and long term benefits for the overall welfare and wellbeing of societies that implement them. Over 100 countries are currently implementing free lunch programs at their primary public schools, according to Candas.
The benefits of such programs, the report outlines, span far beyond the supplementation of diet and nutrition levels, playing a pivotal role in increasing students’ cognitive capacities and concentration levels, encouraging healthy eating habits, preventing long term chronic illnesses, improving students’ academic performances, motivating poor parents to keep their children in school longer, increasing female students’ school attendance, cutting down child labor and contributing to an overall reduction in primary school drop-out levels.
Free food could keep Turkish kids in school
The report points to the sobering results of a study completed by a number of Turkish humanitarian organizations between 1999-2005 indicating that during this period 436,614 children progressed straight into the world of work without having first completed their primary school education.
A report from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) in 2007 relates that 20% of children who had dropped out of primary school at the time had been forced to do so because their family could not meet the financial costs.
Further, a World Health Organization (WHO) report found in 2008 that Turkey ranked highest in the number of complaints such as headaches, stomach aches, tiredness and broken sleep patterns in children aged 11-15. These are a handful of examples, Candas suggested, which indicate that the successes that such programs have achieved elsewhere could be matched in Turkey.
The report “Rethinking School Feeding,” published by the World Bank in 2009, emphasizes the need for a systematic and policy-driven approach to school feeding by both governments and development partners.
The study highlighted that such programs are relatively easy to scale up in a crisis and can provide a benefit per household of more than 10 percent of household expenditures.
“We are trying to encourage new conceptual thinking that considers the relationship between various types of inequalities and recognizes that these are interconnected, as opposed to separate, issues,” Çandas said. Following an in-depth period of field research in Istanbul and examination of the methods of implementation, sustainability, expenses and benefits of free lunch programs around the world today, the research team at Bogaziçi are proposing the launch of a pilot program in 20 primary schools in Istanbul. Locations of the schools include the districts of Sultangazi, Esenyurt, Bahçelievler and Gaziosmanpasa.
‘Free Lunch Isn’t Cool’
As studies such as that conducted at Bogaziçi seek to arouse public awareness about the fundamental role that school meals could play in tackling inequality in Turkey, Çandas and her research colleagues are aware of the uphill battle ahead. Aside from the challenge of implementation, support and reaching the right people, there are also issues of logistics, jealousies and stigma that may arise if only some children are fed.
An article in the New York Times in 2008 entitled “Free Lunch Isn’t Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry,” reported that many children who are in need of food are too embarrassed to be seen receiving free meals, so continue to go hungry.
Similarly, the 2008 Child Poverty Action Group report highlighted that 20 per cent of children entitled to free school meals do not access the service due to stigma. Yet, there are ways around this problem: The 2009 report by the World Bank notes that this problem can and should be solved by merging lunch lines and having all pupils served and seated together.
Inspiration from East to West
Perhaps the most telling sign of the value of free lunch programs are the benefits that have been noted in developed and less developed countries alike. The New York Times reported in November that in Tennessee the number of students receiving subsidized meals has grown by 37 percent since 2007 and research conducted in the UK in 2008 by the Child Poverty Action Group indicated that school dinners are the only hot meal received by one in four children in the UK.
Bogaziçi’s report points to a 2009 study, “International Approaches to School Feeding” by the Global Child Nutrition Foundation, which drew together experiences from Mali, Chile and India to highlight how different societies have succeeded in making a number of differences in this area.
In India, the constitutional right to food was recognized in the Supreme Court in 2001, whereby the government is obliged to provide a cooked, midday meal to all students in government-assisted schools.
Chile, where the government has operated a school feeding program for over forty years, is often lauded as one of the best examples in the world of government commitment to school feeding, whilst food-assisted-education programs in Mali have placed particular impetus on the theme of developing community commitment to school feeding.
“If you want to sit in the shade of a tree tomorrow, you have to water it today,” a Malian mother told researchers, quoting an old proverb.
As the implementation of such a program edges closer to reality, Candas is hopeful that such a move would represent baby steps in the right direction in the eradication of child poverty. “Child poverty breeds more poverty at the societal level,” Çandas said, “so this is not a struggle about individual rights. It is our responsibility to support the future of society and we have to remember that.”
“Is it possible to provide free lunch at primary public schools?” was conducted by Dr Aysen Candas and Basak Ekim Akkan, with the research support of Sevda Günseli and Mehmet Baki Deniz.