Lunch Bags For Children

Lunch Bags for Children

Every school holiday while most of us are being thankful for quieter traffic on the roads or even in our lives if we have school children, a significant number of families will be suffering from food anxiety.

Leafy Surrey is not the place where you expect to encounter poverty; it is hidden which makes it harder to ask for help and harder to address.

In our parish we have a hall located in an area of relative deprivation, where almost 50% of the children at the local school receive free school meals. We have a community fridge and warehouse that weekly addresses need, but school holidays make significantly further demands on families.

For the last three years we have been giving children in vulnerable families a week’s worth of groceries to make simple, healthy lunches. This programme, Lunch Bags for Children, has been feeding 100 children each holiday and across the summer until now.

Our Borough Council had been funding Lunch Bags for Children, but this budget was discontinued 10 months ago at a time when more families are experiencing greater need. Local charities have plugged the gap, but that funding will run out in 7 weeks. We find ourselves in a situation that after 3 Lunch Bags for Children sessions this summer, we will have to stop the programme. It’s heart breaking.

Can you help? Every pound you donate will go directly into a hungry mouth. All overhead costs and other resources needed are born by our church. The only spending is on the food that we buy for the children. We do not believe that this need will continue indefinitely, but until our economy becomes healthy and parents are given a chance to make ends meet, we long to offer hope in the form of actual help.

Thank you for listening,

Sandy Clarke

Vicar of The Bourne and Tilford