Record number of breakfast and lunch packs issued to school children this summer

Over the six week school summer holiday in 2024, Arden Foodbank provided an astounding 367 breakfast and lunch packs for children in receipt of free school meals and for others identified as being in families struggling to afford the additional food costs over the summer break. This compares with just under 100 packs issued in 2023. Each food pack provided breakfast and lunch for 5 days.

None of this would have been possible without our partnership with our primary schools and, for the first time this year, our secondary schools too.  They identify the families in need and send them our letter offering the packs. To collect their food packs, families bring their letter to one of our normal food bank sessions. Again, for the first time this year, one of our primary schools, St.Mary’s Academy in Studley, volunteered to distribute our parcels direct from their school. We also worked with Salford Priors community pantry and Bidford on Avon community fridge for the first time, both of whom kindly offered to distribute food parcels for children attending Salford Priors primary school whose families were unable to get to one of our food banks. We are so very grateful to all our schools and to the community fridge and pantry for working with us to ensure no child needed to be hungry this summer.

At the time of writing, we are just turning our attention to working with our schools to organise the distribution of this year’s Christmas food parcels in December.

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