2018 Volume 76 Issue Supplement Pages S86-S97
Objectives: In Indonesia, many schools do not have school feeding programs, and children usually buy snacks from school canteens or vendors. The history of the country's school feeding programs is not well documented. This study examined Indonesia's nutritional problems and previous school feeding programs. It also investigated the implementation and related challenges in a current pilot national school feeding program known as PROGAS.
Methods: We conducted situational analysis by reviewing secondary data and the existing literature. We also measured the impact of PROGAS on students' nutritional status.
Results: The review revealed that Indonesia has considerable experience in establishing school feeding programs starting from 1991. The government has established a system from the school to central government level for the quality control, monitoring, and assessment of the pilot program. That program is characterized by its wide scope including improvement in students' dietary intake, promotion of local food, improvement in local agriculture, and community empowerment. However, due to the limited resources allocated to human development, diversity in the country, and difficulty in governance, the low coverage of the program (0.05% in 2013 and 0.14% in 2016) is still a major challenge. Among the students who joined PROGAS project, nutritional intake significantly increased during the project, while there were no changes in the control group.
Conclusions: Low coverage of the school feeding program is still a major challenge in Indonesia. In the future, government regulations to increase the program's coverage and nutrition education on all forms of malnutrition targeting school-aged children is necessary.
