Seminar on boosting preschool nutrition held in Beijing

A seminar on preschool nutrition improvement was held on Monday in Beijing to discuss the achievements of pilot projects and future goals in the process of rural vitalization.

The three-year projects, launched by the World Food Programme, aimed to improve the nutrition of children by providing healthy and balanced meals for children in rural kindergartens or preschools while giving job opportunities to local villagers.

The first project started in 2018 in Xiangxi autonomous prefecture, Hunan province, and later spread to poverty-stricken areas in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and provinces of Gansu and Sichuan.

Last year, 2.16 million yuan ($335,145) was invested in projects in Hunan and Guangxi, benefiting 4,986 children aged 3 to 5 as well as 3,000 to 5,000 impoverished households in rural areas, the WFP said. More than 8,000 preschool children have benefited from the projects.

Xie Jianmin, an official with the department of international cooperation at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said the problem of malnutrition among preschool children still exists in several remote areas, and this will be the focus of future work.

China will help children in other countries to solve hunger and malnutrition problems through cooperation, Xie said.

Siddharth Chatterjee, United Nations resident coordinator in China, said collective efforts should be made to spread knowledge to the world.

China's lessons on dealing with obesity, malnutrition and hunger can be taken to other parts of the world, especially Africa, he added.

A signing ceremony for new projects in Hunan and Sichuan was also held at the seminar.