USRPA continues with the School Nutrition Program (SNP) in Guatemala as part of the Market Expansion Strategies Campaign.

The USRPA promotional teams will obtain from the appropriate agency permission to conduct training in schools, along with all information on schools necessary for program planning, including the student population of each school.  A yearly schedule will be made and enough product obtained as needed to provide a school meal for each child at the schools and participating mothers.

USRPA School Nutrition Program teams composed of one coordinator and four trainers will visit up to four schools per day to influence and train school cooks/mothers and teachers.  The two-hour cooking demonstration is conducted at the school kitchen or designated cooking space, this program is focused on teaching mothers the importance of including rice in their families diet as well as giving them different recipes to use rice at every meal. We must emphasize that due to the results of USRPA and Arrozgua campaigns during the past years, the Guatemalan Ministry of Education added rice to 8 of the 20 recipes included in the official recipe book given to the 25,000 schools across the country, 1/3 of the recipes are based on rice. These changes were previously discussed in meetings with technical committees and institutions related to health and nutrition in Guatemala where representatives of ARROZGUA and USRPA participated.