School meal reform is part of comprehensive community recovery, says Oleksii Kuleba

A working meeting chaired by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and featuring Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska was held to discuss the results of the school meal reform strategy.

The event was attended by Deputy Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine - Minister for Communities and Territories Development Oleksii Kuleba, relevant ministers, heads of regional state administrations, community leaders, and international partners.

During the meeting, the results of the reform implementation and further steps for the development of infrastructure solutions in educational institutions in wartime were discussed.

Oleksii Kuleba emphasised that school meal reform is part of comprehensive community recovery: "Comprehensive recovery means that when renovating or building a school, we immediately address several practical issues: child safety, building energy efficiency, the operation of engineering systems, and the organisation of meals. These things cannot be considered separately from each other. Factory kitchens are specialised enterprises that prepare food for educational institutions and can operate flexibly, in particular by providing meals for internally displaced persons or functioning during blackouts. This model reduces the load on the schools' energy systems, optimises costs and production processes, and avoids the need for major modernisation of food facilities in each educational institution. That is why we plan to scale up this effective case and expand the network of factory kitchens," said Oleksii Kuleba.

In addition to the factory kitchens already launched in Bucha and Lozova, there are plans to build five more new facilities in Zaporizhzhia and Lebedyn in Sumy region (frontline communities), as well as in Vyshneve in Kyiv region, Vinnytsia and Sheptytskyi in Lviv region — communities that have sheltered a significant number of internally displaced persons. The implementation of these projects will provide hot meals to more than 60,000 students.

Following the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025, financial agreements were reached with the European Investment Bank for UAH 1 billion to cover the construction of these five factory kitchens. The communities prepared the design and estimate documentation, and submitted all materials to the EIB for approval.

At the same time, technological equipment requires further coordination with international partners, state programmes and local budgets.

In parallel, the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine is implementing 30 projects for the comprehensive renovation of schools, in which the organisation of catering is incorporated directly into the infrastructure solutions. This approach allows educational institutions to be launched as complete, stable facilities immediately after the completion of construction work.

For more details, please, visit the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development website.