A campaign in Merseyside is taking action against food poverty this year by aiming to make sure no families go without a Christmas dinner.
The organisation, Share Your Lunch, has launched a Christmas drive to try and help people in need.
The Liverpool Echo has been leading the campaign and in partnership with Can Cook, a food organisation that works with people living in South Liverpool to teach them basic cookery skills.
The #ShareYourLunch initiative sees a group of chefs and volunteers at Can Cook providing freshly-prepared, chilled meals to deliver directly to the doors of struggling local families.
Can Cook’s operations manager, Shereef Hosny, told JMU Journalism: “Our primary aim is to identify food poverty and give families in need fresh, nutritious food. We work with distribution partners in the community and identify people that will benefit from the meals.”
It is estimated that 60,000 people in Liverpool have accessed a food bank in the last 12 months. Around 25% of food bank users were elderly people and a further 25% were children.
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A Gofund me page has been set up with the aim of raising £10,000 before Christmas, to ensure that no families have to go without a hot meal. The page states that £10 will feed a family of four and so far the page has raised over £800.
Development manager, Laura McCumiskey, told JMU Journalism: “We are currently the only organisation in the city providing fresh food aid provision to families in need. This provision is essential to the health and wellbeing of households who would otherwise struggle to access food that provides them with good nutrition.
“Some of these meals will be delivered in chilled [form] for families who will have the facilities to reheat them on Christmas Day. However, for those families who won’t have the facilities to reheat, hot meals will delivered on Christmas Day.”