A lawyer specialising in the international protection of human rights and Head of Child and Adolescent Policy at Save the Children Italia, Antonella Inverno explains why guaranteeing school meals means investing in the fight against the material, educational and food poverty of children and adolescents.<\/p>\n
Voiceover:<\/strong> Welcome to Voiceover, the podcast series produced by Camst group to share good sustainability practices: an episodic account of professional, life and activist experiences, told in the voices of the people who lived them.<\/p>\n Antonella Inverno:<\/strong> I\u2019m Antonella Inverno from Save the Children. We have been working on school canteens for many years now because guaranteeing school meals means investing in the fight against the material, educational and food poverty of children and adolescents in our country. The school canteen is not just a place where you eat: it is educational time in every respect, school time in every respect, where children can do more than just eat a balanced, protein-rich meal. A great many children today are unable to have this meal. The figure peaks at 13% of children in Sicily and over 10% in Campania, against a national average of 6% of children up to the age of 15 \u2013 almost half a million \u2013 who, even before the pandemic, could not eat an adequate meal with adequate protein content every day. Let\u2019s start from one premise: absolute child poverty in Italy has tripled over the last ten years. It is still rising with Covid and today affects 1,337,000 minors. Its incidence ranges from 9.5% in the Centre to 14.5% in the South. We must also not forget that school meals are an on-demand service and are not yet recognised as an essential service. So there are differences between municipalities in terms of fees, exemptions and criteria that prevent access precisely for the children who need it most. But there is also the other side of the coin. We also consulted the Observatory for Contract Catering and Nutrition, which recorded in 2020 how the school catering sector was one of those hit hardest by the health emergency and lockdown, because the school year closed early, in the first days of March 2020. In this sector, the loss of revenue in 2020 exceeded 60% compared with the previous 12 months. The topic of school reflection must be accompanied, first and foremost, by the question of the right to food, which is at once a means of tackling educational poverty and early school leaving, and of promoting the right to health. From our point of view, school meals cannot continue to be an on-demand service, but should be classified as an essential public service and included among the essential levels of service, given the very nature of the service, as has also been recognised by case law. After all, recognising school catering as an essential public service means affirming that the canteen serves an interest that must necessarily be protected, because canteen time has been recognised as school time, being considered an important moment of socialising and sharing on equal terms as part of a common educational project. That the canteen is a fundamental tool in the fight against child poverty has also been recognised in the fourth and now the fifth National Childhood Plan, which reaffirms its importance, recognising it as a privileged place first of all for guaranteeing at least one quality meal a day, as well as an opportunity for sharing, experiencing social life and learning. Today more than ever it is important to ensure an adequate meal for all children in our country, starting precisely with the areas that have suffered most from the crises caused by the pandemic: an economic crisis, a social crisis, an educational crisis. That is exactly why it is important to ensure that schools that stay open this summer can also provide meals to the children attending them. But we also need a long-term approach and to look straight away not only at the start of the new school year, but also at the years and the crises to come, so that all children have access to a school meal service. Only \u2013 I repeat \u2013 roughly 50% of students can have this guarantee. This is no longer a problem that can be ignored or postponed. Schools must be required to offer this type of service, and it must not be an on-demand service \u2013 where parents who can afford it send their children to eat at school \u2013 but an essential public service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Antonella Inverno, Head of Child and Adolescent Policy at Save the Children Italia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":922,"template":"","categories":[105],"camst_dialoghi_argomento":[76],"class_list":["post-2115","camst_dialoghi","type-camst_dialoghi","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/camst_dialoghi\/2115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/camst_dialoghi"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/camst_dialoghi"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/camst_dialoghi\/2115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2115"},{"taxonomy":"camst_dialoghi_argomento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camst.sitointest.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/camst_dialoghi_argomento?post=2115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}