Wellbeing of Future Generations Act

School meals and Sustainability: International School Meals Day 2025

Today is International School Meals Day, celebrated this year on the 13th March. This day emphasises the importance of ensuring that every child has access to healthy, sustainable, and delicious school meals. As a sustainability charity and the facilitator of the Foundational Economy Capabilities Network, funded by Welsh Government, we care deeply about access to sustainable and healthy food for everyone across Wales. Food and education are foundational sectors of our economy, and we work with many organisations working to improve the availability of sustainable, healthy and nutritious food in schools.  

International School Meals Day  promotes healthy eating habits, highlights the connection between nutrition and education, and encourages an understanding of the significance of providing quality, nutritious meals in schools. 

Nutritious school meals are essential in promoting child health, wellbeing and learning. Healthy food nourishes students to support social and academic development and promote healthy eating habits. The link between healthy eating, education and better learning cannot be understated.  

On International School Meals Day, schools, educators, parents, and policymakers come together to emphasise the importance of providing healthy and balanced meals for students. The focus is on sharing best practices in nutrition education and ensuring every child has access to nutritious meals that support their potential. 

Take a look at some programmes in Wales supporting nutritious food in schools. 

Universal Primary Free School Meal Programme 

Over the past two years, Wales has been implementing the free primary school meals programme. In Wales, all primary school children can access the Universal Primary Free School Meal Programme, ensuring that no child goes hungry at school. This initiative tackles child poverty and promotes healthy eating within schools. It also increases the variety of food options available, improves social skills during mealtimes, and enhances both behaviour and academic achievement. 

Evidence indicates that school meals have numerous benefits: children are more likely to attend and remain in school, learning outcomes improve, socioeconomic disparities diminish, food insecurity is reduced, and low-income families experience less financial pressure. 

Welsh Veg in Schools  

In Wales, leading projects such as Welsh Veg in Schools are aiming to get more organically produced Welsh veg into primary school meals across Wales. Coordinated by Food Sense Wales, the pilot project works with partners including Castell Howell and Farming Connect Horticulture to help get more locally produced organic vegetables into school lunches.

Can Cook 

Can cook aims to eliminate Ultra Processed Free Foods, tackling child poverty and obesity rates. Their “Well Fed” programme includes initiatives like Cook-at-Home meal boxes, mobile shops, and Meals on Wheels.  Check out our full story on Can Cook.

How do school meals relate to the wider world? 

School meals in Wales and across the world are crucial interventions resulting in lasting positive impacts across multiple sectors the sustainable development goals. Read more on the School meals Coalition.

Our global food production and consumption systems are unsustainable and are currently the largest contributors to the climate crisis, the nature emergency, deforestation, the global water crisis, and biodiversity loss. 

The broader benefits of school meal programmes have the potential to positively impact multiple sectors, including health, education, climate, and economic outcomes. These programs can serve as a catalyst for improving children’s health by engaging them in food systems and nutrition education. Additionally, school meal initiatives provide opportunities for UK-based industries to grow, invest, and develop more sustainable food systems.  

Investing in school meals could align with the green growth agenda by emphasising the delivery of healthy and sustainable meals. This focus can inspire innovation and encourage investment by businesses throughout the entire value chain, from agriculture and food production to distribution. Such initiatives can create jobs and enhance productivity, leading to direct growth that is both inclusive and sustainable. 

 By prioritising sustainable suppliers along the whole value chain, there is opportunity for public procurement to make progress towards climate and environmental sustainability goals such as, eliminating plastic waste, reducing food waste and supporting sustainable land use practices. An extended school meal programme has the potential to improve health education, life outcomes and to catalyse innovation, and investment across multiple sectors, transforming food systems benefiting not only job growth but also aligning with our climate and biodiversity goals.  

Cynnal Cymru facilitates the Foundational Economy Capabilities Network, funded by Welsh Government. The foundational economy covers the sectors that are crucial to our daily lives, including food and education. Read more about the foundational economy and the work of the capabilities network here.

School meals and Sustainability: International School Meals Day 2025 Read More »

Is culture the Key to Thriving Over Surviving in Sustainability?

Bread for all, and roses too.

From American suffragist Helen Todd’s original speech in 1911, labour movements worldwide have used the concept of bread and roses to fight for the circumstances where populations are not just surviving but thriving, too. In the Well-being of Future Generations Act, culture is explicitly written as one of the necessary elements of a thriving Wales. The Act intends for ‘A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language. A society that promotes and protects culture, heritage and the Welsh language, and which encourages people to participate in the arts, and sports and recreation.”

The ongoing pressure on the cost of living, the health service and heritage and arts organisations in Wales illustrates the everyday challenges decision makers are having to make on budgets and priorities. When austerity hits, one of the first things to be cut is cultural services, and we’re seeing that now across Wales and the UK. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act challenges us all to not neglect our cultural responsibilities and connections in favour of other priorities.

While we’re not a cultural institution at Cynnal Cymru, we care deeply about wellbeing in all its manifestations. Our Fair Economy team accredit the Living Wage and Living Hours Wales, helping organisations to create working conditions that don’t just meet the bare minimum requirements for living, but help their staff to thrive too. We’ve seen huge transformations where individuals no longer have to work multiple jobs and can spend more time with their families, get enough rest, and engage with the culture and community around them.

Culture plays a key part in unlocking sustainability action and is often forgotten in technical debates around carbon reduction. As Gus Speth, US climate scientist put it:

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

How are our team thriving while surviving?

Sometimes we think about culture as something serious, expensive, and reserved for a few kinds of activities. But just like sustainability is made up of the little changes that add up in all our work, cultural well-being can come from small moments in our everyday lives. Outside of their work at Cynnal Cymru, our staff have rich lives engaging with cultural moments both big and small.

Abi, our Membership Officer, spends one day a week as an apprentice at an antique jeweller, learning how to make and repair fine jewellery. Recently she’s been challenged by learning how to use CAD design as a tool to design and model jewellery, exploring a whole new creative community. Our Head of Business Development, Clare, recently joined a group at the NoFitState circus building to watch part of the Festival Mondial de Cirque de Demain, livestreamed from Paris. When we can take the time for them, these moments of intercultural engagement can inspire us to think outside our daily spheres and even try new things.

Fiona, our Finance Officer, stops crunching numbers to write fiction when she’s not at work. She’s currently working on two novels, one that’s nearly finished and one that’s a fresh project – an old school, tongue-in-cheek heist set in the modern day. Our Marketing and Communications Officer, Beli, also writes fiction, having recently written a short story for the Beyond/Tu Hwnt bilingual anthology of Welsh deaf and disabled writers.

As a crafty team, our staff are often sharing ideas and tools. Recently, our Living Wage Programme Lead, Grace, gave Fiona some embroidery frames and she’s started a new project from them, planning to make two pieces of iridescent insects. There are so many ways we can appreciate and explore ecology and sustainability in ways that are creative, whether that’s researching beetles for a creative project or photographing the beautiful view on one of our coastal walks in Wales, like our Living Wage and Human Resources Support Officer, Alys, who recently walked some the Pembrokeshire Coast.

Blue Lagoon Quarry photographed by Alys Reid Bacon

Integrating Cultural and Sustainability Work

Too often, we can become siloed in our approach to sustainability. The Well-being for Future Generations Goals challenges us to think about everything that a society needs to thrive. No single person or organisation can do it all, but when we work together, we can make lasting and impactful changes. As a membership organisation, we are inspired by the organisations from outside the sustainability sector who are committing themselves to sustainability work, such as our members Arts Council Wales, Ffilm Cymru, and Media Cymru from the arts sector. We’re all aware of the need to change our behaviour to look after our climate and natural environment, and at Cynnal Cymru we’re committed to empowering organisations from every sector to turn that knowledge into actionable steps.

So how can culture help sustainability?

At the recent South East Wales Climate Coalition event, our former Board member Andy Middleton reminded the audience that “change happens by those who hold the best parties.” Joy, creativity, and culture must necessarily go hand in hand with our passion for a better society.

One of our members Coleg y Cymoedd have embraced an Every Day Every Decision approach to sustainability to encourage their staff and students to drive the culture of change based on what is important for them. The technical aspects are still happening, but just backstage. These kinds of innovations that think about what drives behaviour change are so important and integral to our ways of working at Cynnal Cymru.

Another change in culture is moving towards long-term thinking. This is one of the ways of working encouraged by the Future Generations Commissioner. We have benefited from attending the Futures Hub training as they begin to build a community of practice around the change of culture.

To quote educator and author Peter Drucker: ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.’

If we’re too busy looking at the numbers, the facts, the long reports of data, we can neglect to imagine a future that is full of joy, passion, and creativity. Wales is a land of song, literature and culture, and we must savour and treasure these things in little and large ways to create a sustainable future that is authentically Welsh, authentically ours.

Is culture the Key to Thriving Over Surviving in Sustainability? Read More »

Wales in 2051 – Green Skills

In this mini-series, told through six characters, we explore what the world could look like in a healthy, collaborative, and inclusive future where governing structures have adapted to fit a way of life that supports planetary boundaries and fair treatment of all people, with well-being as the focus for measuring societal success.

Inspired by CAST’s social visions of low-carbon futures report, the manifesto by the Ministry of Imagination, Ciprian Sipos’ posts about future jobs, and Climate Outreach, we hope to show readers that everyone can play a huge role in achieving a sustainable present and future.

More importantly, through these stories, we want to focus on the role of skills and enabling environments to illustrate that we need all kinds of ideas, people, and institutions working together as one creative hive mind.

Our first set of stories has been developed by Camille Løvgreen and Dr Karolina Rucinska as part of their work on green skills, alongside a series of events and advice sessions.

Here is what they said:

“Nothing moves us like a good story. Through storytelling, we can imagine the future we are working towards, build hope and momentum, and come together to take collective action. These six characters and their setting let us talk, creatively, about big ideas without using big words. This makes it possible for everyone to see how they fit into the current and future world visions”

Karolina

“The idea of exploring these characters  through an imagined society with different operating structures and a different priority on the way we live is not only to imagine what a healthy coexistence between people and planet may look like, but to explore how quality of life can improve with a deeper connection to the people around us.”

Camille

Setting the scene

It’s 2051, just a year after what leaders of the past called the Net Zero deadline. Although the emissions continued to reduce over the decades, only a few benefited from the shift to low-carbon economies. Why? Worldwide, the transition was a disaster. There was a lack of planning, of imagination and foresight, of inclusion and system thinking… Everything that was not meant to happen…happened. Between 2024 and 2035, the world experienced mass unemployment, instability, closure of borders, the collapse of ecosystems, barren agricultural fields, reversal of human rights, and the collapse of economies.

A year after the big two-oh-five-zero, a leading news agency correspondent visited nations worldwide to see how they were doing. Most people had forgotten what 2050 was about, but a few remembered.

Welcome to Wales in 2051

How it all started >>

Meet our characters

The stories are viewed through the eyes of the narrator, a journalist who sets the scene through a message sent to the editors of a leading news agency about their tour around Wales in…2051!

Starting with Adi, each story introduces a new character who describes their day. Each story leads onto the next, showing how we are all connected directly and indirectly and can positively influence each other’s lives.

Adi – a civil engineer with an expertise in environmental resilience

Meet Adi >>

Cameron – a young school boy, friend of Adi and son of Luke

Meet Cameron >>

Luke – a family man and business owner

Meet Luke >>

Aman – a community farmer

Meet Aman >>

Cleo – a doctor

Meet Cleo >>

Gwen-Eddo – a policy-maker

Meet Gwen-Eddo >>

Wales in 2051 – Green Skills Read More »

What can a just and fair net zero transition look like? 

What can a just and fair net zero transition look like?

What can a just and fair net zero transition look like? It’s a topic that has been on my mind a lot since joining Cynnal Cymru in February as the Senior Programme and Policy Lead, leading our Fair Work and Living Wage team. Unsurprisingly for a charity called ‘Sustain Wales’, we’ve always been a sustainability charity first and foremost. But for a few years now, we’ve worked on developing our aims on ‘just transition’, and that has included embedding the fair work agenda outlined in the Fair Work Wales report in 2019 into our aims. That has meant working with trade unions, writing policy papers on spreading fair work principles throughout existing government programmes, and sitting on the Welsh Government’s group aimed at tackling modern slavery.  

We’re also the Living Wage Foundation’s accreditation partner for Wales, meaning we essentially host Living Wage Wales in house. Living Wage Wales has delivered over 22,000 pay rises for low-paid workers across Wales through this work, including 5,575 in 2023 alone – making a direct contribution to tackling the cost of living crisis. This fits with another key Cynnal Cymru principle – focus on action, not just words. 

This is what myself and my colleagues on the Fair Work and Living Wage team work on – but what does it have to do with sustainability? I’d say it has a huge contribution to make. We should be honest about the fact that there are vested interests who are opposed to carbon reduction and nature-positive actions, particularly at the scale we know these need to happen at. It barely needs saying, but profit motives very often run against sustainability aims. A tree can be a project stewarded by communities over hundreds of years that provides space for nature and clean air for people, or it can be a blocker to a new car park. At time of writing, it was only yesterday that we heard the UAE government plans to use COP28 to make oil deals.  

There are often efforts to protect private profit motives via leveraging the jobs business creates, to bind the inexorable destruction of the natural world to the interests of working people. In this framing, environmentalists and their causes are painted as cloistered from the demands of the real world that most people have to deal with. There’s no hiding from the fact that this can be an emotive and powerful dividing line, carving the people whose world is being worsened away from efforts to protect it. We saw in the recent Uxbridge by-election how action on emissions, in this case Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ), can be utilised for political gain. 

Focus on action – not just words.

For me, then, a just and fair transition isn’t just a slogan. It is a vital tool in our efforts towards carbon reduction and nature restoration. If our sustainability efforts are questioned, we can very happily point to the work we do to ensure that people have access to fair working conditions and boosting the pay of those in the lowest-paid jobs so that they can afford to live and not just exist. Work on a fair and just transition can bind working people to the cause of sustainability – not an inconvenience for people, but an opportunity. At a legislative level in Wales, the recent Social Partnership and Public Procurement Act has amended the Well-being of Future Generations Act to include ‘fair work’, and our well-being indicators include payment of the real Living Wage and trade union membership. This binds the cause of working people even closer to the task of saving our planet. 

If we get it right, the green transition gives us the opportunity to repair many of the broken elements of our economy. It can mean high-quality, unionised, green jobs spread across communities that have seen unfair working practices and low pay proliferate. Green skills training programmes that prepare our workforce for the future can contribute to bringing an end to the gender and racial inequities we see today. And of course, it can mean the avoidance of the road to disaster our climate and natural world are currently on.

So, as we look at Wales Climate Week and COP28, let’s keep the things that are important to people – their livelihoods, incomes, and their everyday lives – at the forefront of our minds. That’s what a just and fair transition is all about. 

Harry Thompson is Cynnal Cymru’s Senior Programmes and Policy Lead. He manages the Fair Work and Living Wage team, which work towards Cynnal Cymru’s strategic goal of a fair and just society. He comes from an economic policy background, having led projects on topics such as empowering trade unions, the Welsh Government’s fiscal framework, and community empowerment.

He is also our Equality and Diversity lead.

What can a just and fair net zero transition look like?  Read More »

Image to show the Future-proofing toolkit website.

The role of business in supporting future generations

It’s been 20 years since Cynnal Cymru began working on the sustainable development agenda for Wales, building consensus and catalysing change with government, businesses and individuals. From convening Wales’s first National Conversation on the ‘Wales We Want’ to providing one-to-one support to public bodies and enterprise, we played a major part in the ascent of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and continue to dedicate our efforts to making sustainability part of the everyday vocabulary.

In February 2023, Cynnal Cymru was delighted to join a project funded by the SMART Innovation team at the Welsh Government and led by Office of the Future Generations Commissioner to review a Future-Proofing toolkit aimed at the private sector.

What is the Well-being of Future Generations Act and why does it matter to business?

The Act, passed in 2015, is one-of-a-kind legislation as it places a legal duty on the 44 public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions, to work better with people, communities and each other, and to work to prevent persistent problems such as poverty, health inequalities and climate change from occurring, rather than just dealing with their consequences. The Act is unique to Wales, attracting interest from countries across the world as it offers a huge opportunity to make a long-lasting, positive change for current and future generations.  

Although the Act does not apply to the private sector, here in Wales large organisations such as Welsh Water began to align themselves with its overall purpose of improving Wales’s well-being in the broadest sense.  They saw the Act as a framework for talking about sustainability to stakeholders and wanted to show the public sector how they too can contribute to the seven Well-being Goals that the Act sets out. After all, the private sector supplies goods and services to the public sector, so it is important to demonstrate shared values. Moreover, given that the Act reflects the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), businesses in Wales, who have been working on the SDGs, understand the Act’s relevance.

Can the Act be a guide for all businesses?

Last year we got a chance to explore this much further. In partnership with the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner we held a series of interviews with large organisations with a presence in Wales, as well as business networks who said that being able to “speak” the language of the Act would be of value to the private sector. However, in the absence of a readily available, comprehensive, and peer-reviewed guide to the Act and a framework to align with, businesses turn instead to global frameworks and the SDGs, which are more familiar to the private sector. The link between the SDGs and the Act in Wales is therefore missed.

On the back of this research, we suggested a framework for businesses to help them start making sense of the Act, which we are now trialling with larger companies. As further research we also ran a workshop with board members of Hafren Dyfrydwy (a subsidiary of Severn Trent Water) to help them realise how to contribute to the Act’s Goals.

Future-proofing smaller businesses 

While our research addressed the challenge that large businesses face, we felt that there was also an opportunity to engage smaller organisations with fewer staff and resources. 

Over the last two decades, we have noticed that small-profit and not-for-profit businesses want to contribute to sustainability but lack time, people, knowledge and money to take action. They want to sustain their operations and provide employment opportunities without causing damage to the environment, communities and economy for years to come. But they feel overwhelmed by the information about sustainability and confused when this is often presented as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must-have’ like HR, health and safety or finance. They are in need of clear advice and want to talk to someone with an understanding of their challenges. We also often hear that businesses want a one-stop shop where they can read and enquire about sustainability and find solutions that are relevant to their size or sector. And because most business owners feel that they are on their own, being part of a community is important to them too.

This is why we were excited to join Matt Appleby, Annabel Lloyd and Jonathan Tench in a project commissioned by Business Wales in conjunction with the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner to review the existing Future-Proofing toolkit and expand it to make it more relevant and helpful to SMEs. 

The toolkit aims to support businesses to play their part in Wales’s journey to the Act’s seven Well-being Goals. It is free of charge, available in the public domain and most importantly, is written from the perspective of businesses and their sustainability priorities.

We recognise, however, that to increase its relevance and effectiveness, the toolkit can be enhanced with more tools, examples and case studies to help businesses future-proof their operations. This is the next stage of our work and we are excited to use the knowledge and insights we have gained from working with our members and others to inform this.

We hope the toolkit will act as a guide to sustainable development as described in the Act, and as a hub of knowledge for businesses seeking ideas and solutions. 

Can you help test this toolkit to meet business needs?

If you are an SME and you’d like to help test this toolkit, please get in contact.

The role of business in supporting future generations Read More »

The Well-being Goals and business

At Cynnal Cymru, we turn sustainability aims into action and accelerate positive impacts towards a low carbon economy, a thriving natural environment and a fair and just society through the provision of advice, training and connections.

Earlier this year, we worked with the Future Generation’s Commissioners Office to identify how the Well-being Act was understood and being used as a sustainable development framework for some large private sector organisations in South Wales. Hafren Dyfrydwy, a provider of water and wastewater treatment services in North East and Mid Wales, invited us to discuss their ongoing contribution to the Well-being Goals at their Board Strategy Day.  Keen to work with leading organisations in Wales, we jumped at the chance.

On 4 October, Karolina and Sarah travelled to Hafren Dyfrdwy to participate in a dedicated workshop built around Hafren Dyfrdwy’s ongoing contribution to the Act; its relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Company’s PR24 planning.  The Board also discussed approaches taken by other large companies in Wales to align their approaches to the Act.

The session was informative, as well as interactive and energetic. For example, we used the Future Generations Prompts as an catalyst to spark the Board’s strategic thinking and group brainstorming activities to map out future strategic activity and progress against each goal.

The workshop highlighted the excellent programme of activity that Hafren Dyfrdwy already does to contribute towards the Well-being Goals and prompted discussion around further opportunities to support their ongoing positive social and environmental impact. 

“Massive thank you to Sarah and Karolina for running a fantastic, creative and energetic session on the Well-being of Future Generations Act at our recent Board Strategy Day. It gave us real food for thought in terms of how we better bring to life our existing activities that supports the Act’s goals, and helped us think more broadly about areas where we can go further. Thank you again.”

(Tom Perry, Strategy Manager)

Dr Karolina Rucinska is our Sustainability advisor who often uses facilitation, research and workshopping methods in work with our clients. Sarah Hopkins is the director of Cynnal Cymru, with an expertise in fair work and sustainability in global supply chains and a firm understanding of the public and private sectors.

If you are interested in finding out more about our work, please contact us at shwmae@cynnalcymru.com to let us know how we can help.

The Well-being Goals and business Read More »

Scroll to Top
Skip to content