The holiday season for children whose families can provide all of their basic needs is always a joyful one - to be able to play all day, to visit relatives and to travel. However, for a very significant number of Brazilian children, the holidays have a different meaning for them as well as for their parents - more suffering and hunger. This is because during the school year, all children of school age who attend primary school are entitled to receive a full meal at school - something that for some children end up being their only daily meal, so when on holiday do not have access to this source of nutrition. Moreover, when parents work to support their family, and do not have money to send their children off with relatives or to do other activities, children spend the holidays with very little structure, effectively "bringing themselves up" a fact that is exacerbated when many government programmes and non-governmental organizations also go into recess during the school holidays.
And how do we change this scenario? Firstly the different levels of government must recognize this reality - that with almost universal primary education combined with the right to free school meals, many poor families now depend on the school to meet their children´s nutritional needs - and understand that they have to take specific steps during the school holidays to ensure the constitutional rights of all Brazilian children to health and nutrition. Once recognized, each local government, knowing the reality and local needs could create permanent programmes for the school holidays to offer a balanced diet to those in need; funding for such programs must be from mixed sources – from the Federal, State and Municipal Governments given that it would be to cover people's basic needs.
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