Tackling Hunger in Bristol
Feeding Bristol is a charity that provides strategic leadership and support in tackling food insecurity across Bristol in a coordinated and collaborative way. The charity supports the increased efficiency and effectiveness of existing practitioners and community groups, by helping them to add further value to their current operations.
In the summer of 2020, Feeding Bristol approached The Society of Merchant Venturers (SMV) for a grant towards its overall costs of the Healthy Holiday Programme. The programme focused on supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children across the city during the summer holiday period. As well as the provision of food, the programme also offered stimulating activities to improve the wellbeing of those children
More specifically, the grant contributed to several Family Food sessions at various locations across the city. These sessions were a huge success, providing the context for reaching out to vulnerable children and their families in some of the most deprived communities in the city.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the usual range of summer activity programmes could not take place, so Feeding Bristol collaborated with leaders from the Play, Children and Youth sectors across Bristol to develop and deliver a plan to provide a complete Healthy Holiday Programme to as many children in need across Bristol as possible. This helped to reduce the negative effect potentially caused by the combination of Covid-19 and holiday hunger.
Children from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds enjoyed spending time together in small groups, having fun while learning to prepare healthy meals.
In total, Feeding Bristol raised an incredible £150k of funding for the six week-long Healthy Holiday Programme 2020. The impact of every donation was significant, enabling the charity to provide support to over 2,000 of the most vulnerable children in the city.
SMV was delighted to have been able to help support such an important project, especially given the increased challenges that so many families have faced during lockdown and as a direct result of the pandemic.
