Park Community School’s holiday programme will help ensure children don’t go hungry
DISADVANTAGED children in Leigh Park will not go hungry this summer thanks to confirmation the Connect4Summer programme will be running for a second year.
The programme, which will once again be hosted by Park Community School, will not only provide vulnerable children with a healthy daily meal but will also give them the chance to take part in a range of sports and activities including healthy cookery classes for entire families.
After receiving confirmation the Department for Education will continue to fund the project, headteacher, Christopher Anders, said: ‘We are very excited and delighted to be involved in this large project for a second year. We will be able to support more families with holiday child care and family fun days.’
The problem of holiday hunger has been a longstanding issue in the area with the school’s own Munch project regularly providing up to 100 meals a day for vulnerable families.
School community manager, Susan Parish, said: ‘We believe that this programme will meet a need for all families by addressing social isolation, providing good quality food and a whole range of activities for the family in safe environments, going some way to making the summer holidays something to enjoy.’
This year’s initiative will have to be adapted with the school confirming there will be an ‘exciting programme whilst adhering to all the latest Covid-19 guidelines’.
The issue of holiday hunger was recently brought to prominence by Manchester United and England footballer, Marcus Rashford, who described his own experience of going hungry when the provision of free school meals ceased over the summer holidays. It was a campaign which brought about a government U-turn in continuing free school meal vouchers to parents over the summer holidays.
The Park Community School programme is one of 58 taking place across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.