Cassava, juçara, pamonha, plantain, peanuts, hominy or munguzá are the foods that indigenous children would like to have in their school lunches. The adequacy of school meals in indigenous territories is one of the challenges of the National School Meals Program (Pnae). A differentiated school lunch with at least 30% of products purchased from family farming and that respects the culture and food tradition of indigenous peoples is one of the guidelines provided for in the Pnae. The law determines that the menu be offered with products from the community, which often do not reach the plate of children in indigenous schools, says Mariana Santarelli, member of FIAN Brasil (Organization for the Human Right to Food and Adequate Nutrition) and coordinator of the School Feeding Observatory. FIAN Brasil has been operating in the country for 22 years. “Getting food to the villages depends on boats, and the complexity of the Amazon is enormous. This reality possibly happens in other parts of the country where villages — and rural areas — are far from the headquarters of municipalities. The federal government’s resources for indigenous peoples and quilombolas needed to be greater due to this different reality and greater logistical complexity. The resource is not enough, even considering the increase in the Pnae’s total budget”, laments Mariana. In March, the government increased the transfer of school lunches by up to 39%. The National School Feeding Program allocates additional resources to support the daily care of approximately 40 million students in approximately 150 thousand schools. The financial transfer is divided into up to ten installments, from February to November of each year, and corresponds to 20 school days per month. The calculation of the resources to be transferred takes into account the number of days of service, the total number of students enrolled in each network or teaching unit and the respective per capita value. For indigenous and quilombola schools, the cost is R$0.86 per student, which can be supplemented by states and municipalities. “The complementation is not regulated by law, it is a prerogative of each of the executing entities. So it varies a lot across the country. There are municipalities with greater collection capacity that credit more in school feeding and other municipalities and states that do not, either due to lack of political will or lack of resources”, adds the coordinator of the School Feeding Observatory. In the case of indigenous peoples, there are other variants. “It is not a reality throughout the country, but, at least in the Amazon region, most of the municipalities where there are indigenous people have low revenue and little capacity to allocate additional resources.” They are municipalities that operate only with the resource that comes from the Pnaes and that is not enough, points out Mariana. “In Tabatinga [Amazonas], most days of the school year there is no food for students in the distant village. Four deliveries are made per year, and purchases from family farming were also only three deliveries per year. It is very little, most of the school days they go without food”. FIAN Brasil carried out a case study in Tabatinga, in dialogue with women from the Tikuna people, to identify the opportunities and challenges encountered by local indigenous communities in accessing the Pnae. The study can be accessed at this link. In April, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) notified the Secretariat of Education of Amazonas for non-compliance with a recommendation on school feeding programs and warned of accountability. The MPF proposes an agreement to comply with the law and launch a public call for the purchase of family production from indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The Pnae is monitored and supervised directly by society, through the School Feeding Councils and also by the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE), by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), by the Comptroller General-of-the-Union (CGU) and by the Public Ministry.
Agência Brasil
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