City Catering serves over 13,000 meals to 21 holiday clubs supported over 5 weeks funded by Southampton City Council
This summer City Catering served over 13,000 meals to 21 holiday clubs supported over 5 weeks funded by Southampton City Council’s Holiday Activities and Food programme. We are now asking you to help Southampton retain the funding to continue to support families, year after year.
We supported 20 activity clubs funded by the local HAF programme including Super Star Sports, Saints Foundation, Active Me 360, Globefit, Make Lunch and Southampton Children’s Play Association, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton City Farm. We also provided meals to some member schools’ clubs, such as Thornhill Primary and St Patricks as well as non-member schools like Oasis Mayfield.
Images above: Lunch being at St. Mary’s Primary School for ActiveMe 360 funded by Southampton City Council.
Having been involved in supporting a number of free holiday’s clubs over the years through our Lunch Crowd initiative, we welcomed the opportunity to be part of Southampton’s largest free holiday provision opportunity. We firmly believe that all children should be able to access good food, all year round, and are delighted that the funding from central government and Southampton City Council enabled such a diverse range of activities and food, citywide. What a fantastic opportunity for children!
The HAF programme specifically supported children who are eligible for Free School Meals, and in some cases, their families too. Whilst club leaders put on an array of sporting and extra-curricular activities, we served up meals such as freshly made pizzas, butternut squash and chickpea cakes, vegetable pasta, as well as healthier takes on popular desserts including a carrot and courgette cake and chocolate and beetroot brownie.
Jessica Clasby-Monk, Charitable Impact Manager for City Catering reflected on the summer;
“This summer represented a significant change in the support for families nationally. However, the funding for the programme – which has been in pilot for since 2018 – is yet to be confirmed for the 2022. We await confirmation in this autumn’s Spending Review; however, it is vital that families and the organisations that support them know in the long term what opportunities are available to them. It’s a huge team effort to put on such an array of activities and events – and that takes time to plan, in order to deliver a sustainable, cost-effective and high quality offer.”
How can you help? This month, the Prime Minister reshuffled his cabinet, so now is the perfect opportunity to write to your MP and local Councillors and ask them to pledge their support to keeping the HAF programme for 2022 and beyond and let Ministers know how important it is. It is also a key ask in Marcus Rashford’s #EndChildFoodPoverty campaign, which we fully support.
This summer was also a great opportunity for our marketing department to capture what happens at Lunch Crowd - they were given behind the scenes access to the cooking and delivery process. City Catering Southampton Marketing Executive, Jordan Porter visited several City Catering Lunch Crowd programmes you can check his blog.
Our summer holiday provision was a huge success, and many of our trialled dishes are now making their way on to our school winter menu – which is bigger and better than even before with even more dishes will be cooked from scratch in our school kitchens - offering freshly cooked nutritious and tasty meals every lunchtime. Watch this space to find out more very soon!
Many of our Lunch Crowd dishes also feature in our free and online Cooking at Home programme for you to enjoy with all the family. Get involved, and let us know what you think on our Facebook Group.