Asda donates 150,000 meals and extends kids eat free offer at its cafes to help tackle holiday hunger
Asda is enabling over 150,000 meals to be provided to children and families during half term to help tackle holiday hunger and has announced that it is also extending its kids eat free offer in all of its cafes into the Easter holidays too.
Children aged 16 and under can access a nutritionally balanced hot or cold meal when an adult spends £1, with the offer also available to takeaway. Since the promotion began, Asda has seen over 230,000 free meals claimed by children.
Alongside charity partner FareShare, Asda is also making a 150k meal donation so that vulnerable children can access balanced meals over the holiday period - a time when people can often struggle to provide food for their families.
The donation has been made possible through Asda’s Fight Hunger Create Change programme, which has helped the retailer continues to help food redistribution charity FareShare provide over 51 million meals. Asda has also invested in the charity’s infrastructure so that an additional 4,670 charities have access to fresh, quality food across the country.
Jo Warner, Asda’s Community Director, said:
“The past year has been extremely challenging for so many families. We know that throughout the school holidays, food banks and charities see an increase in demand for emergency food parcels and services, which is why we’re so pleased to be able to provide meals to families across the country who would otherwise rely on a school meal during term time.”
Lindsay Boswell, FareShare Chief Executive, said:
“FareShare has more than doubled the amount of food it distributes over the past year, now providing frontline charities with enough food to create over 2 million meals each week – with two thirds of this food being accessed by children and families. Asda’s investment in our infrastructure with additional warehouse space, chillers and vans has been crucial in enabling us to respond to the crisis – but we know the hard work is far from over, with vulnerable families struggling even more during half term breaks without the safety net of free school meals.
With Asda’s support the FareShare network will be working tirelessly over the February half term to get as much good surplus food to the children and families who need it.”
As part of the Fight Hunger Create Change partnership, which brings together both FareShare and the Trussell Trust, Asda has been able to support more than 1 million people over three years by providing not only fresh food, but access to support services to help people in crisis get out of the situation they find themselves in.
Through the £25 million donation Asda has made to its charity partners over the past 3 years, £5.7 million has been granted to food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network to provide services such as finance and debt advice.