Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) Keun Faaba school feeding project in Benin first began in 2014. Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition (USDA’s MGD FFE) program, the project supported 152 primary schools until its closure in 2023 when school feeding responsibility was handed over to the Government of Benin’s Integrated National School Feeding Program (PNASI). In the same zone, CRS/Benin also led a 2017-2020 USDA-funded Local and Regional Procurement (LRP) project to pilot a local model linking local agricultural actors with the school feeding system. The 80 schools engaged in this pilot were also transitioned to PNASI at project closure for continued school feeding support. These past projects offer important learning on the sustainability of CRS’ school feeding model and transition processes from CRS to local government. In 2024, CRS conducted a mixed-methods ex-post study to explore two learning questions:
What was the process to transition responsibility for school feeding to the Government of Benin? What worked well and what did not?
Which components of school feeding have been sustained and how? Which have waned and why?
