a growing collection of resources

This hub, developed in 2022, aims to provide a growing collection of resources that might of use to teachers across the Pacific Islands who are integrating food and nutrition content in their learning experiences.

Development of the hub

FAO-SAP and the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) completed two projects in 2018¹ and 2019² exploring the capacity for school nutrition education programs in Pacific Island countries. During this process, stakeholders from the education sector in the Pacific highlighted nutrition as playing an important role within schools, and a desire to incorporate nutrition into the curriculum. However, teachers reported the following barriers to incorporate nutrition education in schools:

Limited access to culturally appropriate and credible teaching resources
Limited time to source and adapt existing resources that are not culturally appropriate
Limited options for upskilling in food, nutrition and agriculture and challenges identifying credible resources

The Pacific School Food Learning and Teaching hub hopes to help address the barriers identified by creating a platform that collates culturally appropriate food, nutrition and agriculture resources and professional development courses within the region. The hub plans to continue to develop and evolve according to the kindly appreciated feedback from the education sector and community within the Pacific Islands.

1. School Nutrition Education Programmes in the Pacific Islands: A Scoping Review and Capacity Needs Assessment. (2018). Report: ca2935en.pdf (fao.org).
2. School Food Programmes in the Pacific Islands: A Scoping Review and Capacity Needs Assessment. (2019). Report currently in publishing process.

Our Mission

This hub was developed with funding from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Sub-Regional office for the Pacific Islands.

We undertook a systematic desk review to identify any resources that might be of use to teaching food and nutrition in Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. We then checked the content and accuracy of the information with an adapted tool (for more information please see the ‘share resources’ page). We then gave each resource a series of tags so they can be identified.

For example, if you are looking for resources that relate to gardening, these can all be found by ‘ticking this box’ when you do your search. While the country of origin for each resource is included, where available, it is likely that the resources could be of use as they are or adapted in other countries.