Across Ontario, communities are rallying behind a simple but powerful and well-established idea: students learn better when they are well nourished. Through the Ontario Student Nutrition Program, schools and community partners continue to expand access to healthy meals and snacks that help children focus, grow, and succeed.
From new investments and innovative programming to strong community-based local planning partnerships, exciting momentum is building across the province—including in the Hamilton, Niagara, Brantford, County of Brant, and Haldimand–Norfolk regions.
In the past 3 years, an additional average of 11,000 students participate each day in the Student Nutrition Program of Hamilton-Niagara, with a current daily average of nearly 68,000 students attending each day throughout the region, representing 4 students for every 10 that attends school.
Each week, an army of dedicated and passionate volunteers procures, prepares, and serves healthy foods, and addresses a myriad of the many aspects of the program. In 2024-25, 280,000 volunteer hours were donated in-kind to the regional student nutrition program of Hamilton-Niagara; a value of over $6.3 million dollars at living wage. While the cost of food for the Student Nutrition Program continues to remain the primary challenge, the absolute necessity of program volunteers cannot be overstated.
While the rising cost of food and a growing number of participating students continues to challenge student nutrition program budgets, volunteer capacity is also essential to every single step of the process, and volunteer capacity has been under stress for nearly a decade, with particular challenges post COVID-19 pandemic.
Local Planning Partnerships Power Local Programs
Local planning partnerships are a cornerstone of the Ontario Student Nutrition Program (OSNP), helping ensure programs are responsive to the unique needs of each community. By bringing together schools, public health units, community organizations, local governments, and volunteers, these partnerships create a coordinated approach to delivering nutritious food to students. This collaboration allows communities to identify gaps, share resources, and ensure that programs are reaching the students who need them most.
These partnerships also help tailor student nutrition programs to reflect local realities. Communities can incorporate culturally appropriate foods, source ingredients from local farmers and suppliers, and design programming that fits the schedules and needs of their schools. In many cases, local planning groups also help build stronger connections between nutrition programs and broader initiatives within the school curriculum such as food literacy education and school gardens.
Perhaps most importantly, local partnerships foster a sense of shared responsibility for student well-being. When community partners, businesses, volunteers, and educators work together, student nutrition programs become more sustainable and resilient. This collective effort helps ensure that more students across Ontario have reliable access to healthy food—supporting their well-being, readiness to learn, and long-term success.
Local Fundraising is Essential
Ontario continues to strengthen its support for student nutrition programs across the province, with the government increasing its investment in the Student Nutrition Program and the First Nations Student Nutrition Program to $37.5 million annually, helping serve more than 800,000 students and deliver over 140 million meals and snacks each year.
Within the Hamilton-Niagara region, local planning partnerships are also playing a key role in strengthening student nutrition initiatives, doubling the amount of locally-sourced fundraising since the 2022-23 school year to ensure that adequate funding is available to fuel the purchase. These partnerships help ensure programs can continue operating in the face of rising food costs and growing demand from families.
A recent example is the continued support from FirstOntario Credit Union, which donated $250,000 to student nutrition programs across communities including Hamilton, Niagara, Brant, Halton, and Haldimand–Norfolk. Since 2014, the organization has contributed more than $2.6 million to support school nutrition initiatives and the organizations that deliver them.
In the Hamilton region, programs delivered by organizations such as Hamilton Tastebuds are helping bring nutrition education to life through creative events and hands-on experiences such as the Great Big Crunch, where thousands of students across the city simultaneously bite into locally grown apples while learning about healthy eating and local agriculture.
Meanwhile, programs across Niagara continue to expand their reach through the efforts of Niagara Nutrition Partners, which supports nutrition programs in schools throughout the region and helps coordinate community fundraising and volunteer engagement. This partnership recently expanded to a new and more spacious location to accommodate the exceptional growth.
In Brantford and the County of Brant, the organization Brant Food For Thought plays a central role in delivering student nutrition programs in local schools. The organization currently supports over 12,000 students each week and expects to serve more than 1.35 million breakfasts and healthy snacks during the school year.
Student nutrition programs in Haldimand and Norfolk are coordinated through Haldimand-Norfolk REACH, which serves as the lead agency supporting schools across the region. The Child Nutrition Network is the local partnership that coordinates the delivery of the Ontario Student Nutrition Program across both Haldimand and Norfolk counties.
Regional Collaboration
Working closely with schools and community partners, these organizations help deliver healthy food options to students throughout the day—from breakfast programs to classroom snack bins—ensuring children have reliable access to nutritious food during the school day.
The region’s programs are part of the broader Ontario Student Nutrition Program network, demonstrating how local leadership and provincial support work together to build stronger, healthier school communities.
This year the students have been very engaged with wanting to help out; that includes making bins and distributing them to the right classes as well as collecting the bins. They were very shocked with how long it takes to get the bins ready and couldn’t believe that we do it everyday. The students also took it upon themselves to do fundraising to help support the program. – Student Nutrition Program Volunteer