O PNAE e suas adaptações em meio à pandemia da COVID-19: a creche como espaço promotor de direitos à alimentação adequada

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to analyze the adaptation of the PNAE in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the provision of food for children aged 0 to 3 years enrolled in a daycare center, which serves children in situations of social vulnerability, from the municipal network of the teaching of Pato Branco. In 2019, a new disease caused by Coronavirus was identified, COVID-19, and in early 2020 it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In March 2020, children were prevented from attending school due to this disease. So far, the National School Feeding Program - PNAE has not been interrupted, and it is a challenge to offer school meals to these children while they remain in social isolation. The locus of this research was the municipality of Pato Branco, which has 23 Municipal Child Education Centers, 14 independent and 9 with schools. To carry out the field research, a daycare center located in a neighborhood where the population is in social vulnerability was selected. This research can be characterized as qualitative, of the case study type, which composes its corpus from information available on the internet. We work with primary data, collected through interviews, secondary data, such as state and municipal laws that provide for food distribution. Data collection was carried out with the person responsible for implementing the distribution of kits, a coordinator, and five mothers who have their children enrolled in daycare. Legislation and public policies concerning food and children's rights were analyzed, such as the Federal Constitution of 1988; The Human Right to Adequate Food contemplated in Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA - Law No. 8069/1990); Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB n.º 9.394/1996). And, more specifically, the Food Guide for Brazilian children under 2 years of age (2019); the National School Feeding Program (PNAE); Law 13,987 of 2020, which guarantees the distribution of food in schools during the pandemic; Resolution No. 6 May 2020, which provides for the provision of school meals to students in basic education within the scope of the PNAE. As the main results of the analysis, we identified that the food provided to the children in the daycare center during this pandemic period is not sufficient to guarantee adequate nutrition, as it is not similar, in quantity and variety, to what the children received in daycare centers. In addition, public food policies are not being implemented to guarantee the Human Right to Adequate Food, because most social policies are based on offering what is possible, and not what is right. Therefore, policies must aim at combating poverty along with Food and Nutritional Security to guarantee rights in their entirety. It is intended that the scientific contribution of this research shows the importance of specific public policies for the age group of children from 0 (zero) to 3 (three) years, which address situations like the one we have been living in since March 2020, or any other situation that prevents them from receiving this food in the educational environment.