Covid-19: Unicef launches first emergency response to tackle UK child food poverty
Fiona Simpson
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Unicef has launched its first ever domestic emergency response to tackle child food poverty across the UK in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Unicef UK has partnered with food and farming charity Sustain to launch Food Power for Generation Covid - a grant-funded programme supporting community food projects until February 2021.
-
Funding Focus - Covid recovery funding
-
CYP Now launches #Chances4Children campaign
-
Related news: Extend free school meals to 1.5m more children, National Food Strategy says
The initiative aims to tackle rising numbers of poverty as Unicef figures show of the 2.4 million children already living with food insecurity, one fifth of these households will have gone hungry during lockdown.
Latest figures from the Child Poverty Action Group estimate that a further one million children will fall into poverty by the end of the year due to the pandemic.
Sustain’s Food Power programme was launched in 2017 to support place-based alliances across the UK to tackle local issues relating to food access and food affordability.
Unicef UK’s existing UK programmes already operate in all four nations reaching more than 2.5 million children each year.
Working through the local Food Power alliances, the new initiative will award grants to community food projects that reach the children and families most in need.
Anna Kettley, director of programmes at Unicef UK, said: “The coronavirus crisis is having an unprecedented impact on children’s lives – their support systems ripped apart, their education lost, their access to food impacted.
“Through these grants, we hope to reach the UK’s most vulnerable children and their families and ensure they receive the vital food support they need to eat well.”
Simon Shaw, head of food poverty programme at Sustain, said: “All over the UK local food poverty alliances and food partnerships have been taking action to ensure local people have access to nutritious food during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Local alliances are well-placed to support their communities during the next few months and to reach those who have been hardest hit.”
Funding for the project comes from funds previously raised by Soccer Aid for Unicef.
The first round of grants will be awarded this week and the initiative will run until the end of February 2021.
