Over the 6 weeks holidays, our Holiday Hunger campaign has been in full swing to help hungry children in Walker. To make sure we could help as many young children as we could, we set the target high at £500. We would like to say a huge thank you to the generous donations given to us throughout the campaign. We had one astonishing donation from a generous supporter who ensured out target was smashed. Over the summer holidays, many children lost out on their free school meal, but thanks to donations from our kind supporters, we were able to provide fresh fruit, hot meals and healthy packed lunches to those in need.
Our target was reached quickly, ensuring that children could access healthy nutritious food from week 2 onwards of the summer holidays. A survey of teachers carried out by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Hungers found that children often return to school after the holidays hungry which has a negative impact on the children’s education, social wellbeing and physical health. Alongside this, 39% of schools in a 2016 survey have said that a holiday hunger programme needs to be in place, although only 29% of those provided such a service. We felt it necessary to tackle holiday hunger ourselves this Summer, and, thanks to the success of our campaign, children can return school prepared to learn and make contributions in their lessons.
Thanks to you we were able to;
Provide 60 children with community teas.
Identify the children most in need and provide them with packed lunches.
Offer free fruit to every child in Walker Park over the Summer Holidays.
