Food poverty is a longstanding issue that affects families in communities all over the country. Sanctuary is committed to playing its part in tackling the issue and helping to find sustainable long-term solutions.
Through our Community Investment programme, we have provided nearly £28,000 of funding this year for projects helping to address food poverty. These include foodbanks, cooking projects teaching people essential skills and emergency food parcel delivery schemes.
We also support a range of projects specifically aiming to tackle ‘holiday hunger’ – where families experience difficulties providing adequate nutritional food for their children during school holidays. These include:
- Cherwell – we work alongside Cherwell District Council to deliver the Play:Full programme, providing healthy food and enriching activities. You can read more about the project from Charlie Heritage, Neighbourhood Partnerships Manager, in Inside Housing.
- Hackney – using community centre space on our Gascoyne estate, we work with our residents and charities Children with Voices and The Felix Project to provide parcels of culturally appropriate cooked food for local families.
- Chester – we are working with charity Changing Lives Together to deliver boxes of fresh food to families with children in the Lache area of the city. More than 100 boxes of food were distributed during the October half-term.
- Scarborough – working with Beyond Housing, we helped Gallows Close Community Centre distribute 325 food and activity packs to families on the Barrowcliff estate who would otherwise have struggled to feed their children nutritious food.
Marie-Claire Wattison, Sanctuary’s Head of Community Investment, said: “Food poverty is one of the biggest challenges we face as a country; it’s heartbreaking to think that so many people are struggling to put nutritious food on the table.
“We are committed to doing all we can to change this and will continue to work closely with our communities to ensure that help is available for those who need it.”
