Category

• Fully Validated Effective Local Practice

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Poverty impact

• Mitigation
• Awareness

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Poverty driver

• Provide benefit in-kind (material)
• Provide benefit in-kind (experience)
• Non-driver - improving quality of life

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Keywords

• Child Poverty
• Food insecurity
• School holidays
• Families
• Community Organisation

Aim

The primary goal is to address food insecurity during school holidays to lessen and mitigate child poverty in Dundee.

Summary

The Fun and Food programme by Dundee Bairns works to reduce food insecurity during holidays by delivering cold packed lunches across Dundee during April, Summer and October school holidays. The project delivers the food out to community groups, schools, and family support teams. Fun and Food also helps to support other community provisions such as community fun days in areas of high multiple deprivation, playschemes for kids, day trips, targeted childcare and transitions between different levels of schooling. All activity supported by Dundee Bairns Fun and Food must be free or at a very low cost to children. The project delivered 37,000 meals to over 100 different projects over the summer of 2022.

What difference does it make?

Dundee Bairns Fun and Food project has had a significant impact on families in poverty in Dundee. This project will help mitigate impacts of poverty by allowing parents to have less financial strain by providing free meals for their children while still allowing them to not be stigmatised by the community, making it more likely for people to accept the help they need.

Key take-aways

• Provision of free activities together with free meals de-centres free food provision and de-stigmatises accessing the service.
• Outsourcing food provision to a contractor outside the charity is efficient as they have structures that are already functional which allows the charity to focus on distribution and provision of food and activities instead of food preparation.
• Collaborating with schools and community organisations provides valuable insight into where support with holiday hunger is needed the most.

 

Organisations

Dundee Bairns

Location

Dundee (throughout)

Contact