Brakes pledges £500,000 to help end holiday hunger

The new boss at foodservice wholesaler Brakes has pledged an extra £500,000 to its Meals & More charity initiative over the next five years.

Ton Christiaanse, the new UK chief executive, announced the additional funding at the Brakes UK Child Food Insecurity Forum held at the House of Commons this week (25 April).

Child food poverty affects more than 3.5 million children in the UK, which Christiaanse described as "completely unacceptable".

He said: "In today's society we simply cannot allow child hunger to continue. At Brakes we launched the Meals & More initiative to start a movement, a movement that will change the lives of millions of children for the better.

"But we need more support from other food businesses and from the government. In order to truly make a difference, we need to ensure that we are all working together to eliminate this blight on our society. Together we will make that difference."

The initiative, driven by Brakes and 30 of its suppliers, was launched in a bid to ensure children do not go hungry, particularly in the holidays when there is a lack of structured help.

It supported 42 clubs in some of the most deprived areas of the UK in 2016, providing around 10,000 nutritious meals in the summer holidays alone to almost 2,000 children, as well as holiday activities for those children who normally benefit from free school meals.

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