World Milk Day Is September 28!

Join This Year's Celebration!

First celebrated in 2000, World School Milk Day is an international, annual event held on the last Wednesday in September. Established by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the day provides an opportunity for the international community to focus on the importance of school milk and its health benefits for growing children. Celebrations are unique to each country, and involve children in a variety of ways. In Chile for example, an opera, "La Via Lactea" (The Milky Way), marked the occasion in 2004, while Germany held a "Fitness and Nutrition Day" that promoted milk as essential for a balanced diet and raised money for sports associations.

Create a closer, healthier world by having your students participate in this international event. Try these activities:

• Encourage children to drink milk with their lunch and at snack time.
• Learn about how milk is produced around the world. Have children write a skit showing what they learn. Older students can learn about the role of dairy farming in different nations' economies and how it can help prevent malnutrition in developing countries.
• Create "Why School Milk Is Good for Us" or "School Milk Around the World" posters.
• Work with your school foodservice director to hold a "Milk Around the World" day that coordinates with classroom learning.
• Bring in international cookbooks and compare and contrast how milk and milk products are consumed in different cultures.
• Have a Milk Mustache contest.

Children need at least three servings of milk, cheese or yogurt each day.