Sussex Cricket Foundation and Brighton & Hove Food Partnership provide recipe kits for over 1,000 local families
Photo: Brighton & Hove Food Partnership
1,200 recipe kits will be distributed to help families in Brighton and Hove during the school holidays. The ‘In the Bag’ kits, funded by Sussex Cricket Foundation, will be sent out weekly over the school summer holidays and will include ingredients and cooking instructions for a different meal each week.
Families in receipt of the meal kits have been identified through the city’s Emergency Food Network. The recipes have been carefully chosen to include food that households regularly receive from food banks and all will contain fruit and veg. They involve creative ways to use the ingredients and are designed to help the food go further. The ingredients will be weighed out and bags made up by a team of volunteers.
The recipe kits come at a time when more families are feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on household incomes and are turning to food banks for support. As well as providing much needed food, the kits offer families a fun activity to take part in during the school holidays.
The recipe kits are being organised by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership who have been coordinating the city’s emergency food response during Covid-19.
Photo: Brighton & Hove Food Partnership
Vic Borrill, Director of the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership says “it is a vital time for this initiative. During lock down we provided 3,200 households with emergency food parcels in just one week. A shocking 1,300 of those included children. The financial impact of Covid-19 is an ongoing challenge.”
The funding from the Sussex Cricket Foundation was raised following the establishment of a COVID-19 working group. The group identified ways in which they could significantly support the East and West Sussex community during COVID-19.
A ‘Together Through This Test’ auction was held, which saw over £35,000 raised for various local causes across England and Wales. Sussex Cricket raised £10,000 of the total and the funds will be distributed to the community of Sussex to help charities and causes impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The meal kit initiative named ‘In the Bag’ is the first project to receive funding from the Sussex Cricket Foundation, with more to follow over the coming months.
Items for the auction were donated by sponsors, partners and friends of Sussex Cricket. Prizes included the chance to play your own Twenty20 cricket game at the 1st Central County Ground in 2021, a limited-edition Twenty20 jumper signed by England Cricketer Jofra Archer, and a chance to become a winemaker for the day with local winery, Ridgeview
Katy Cooper, Trustee of the Sussex Cricket Foundation says, “As we heard just last week with the announcement of the new National Food Strategy, poor nutrition for children in England is a ‘slow motion disaster’. The Sussex Cricket Foundation is delighted to be taking steps to tackle this in Brighton and Hove through our partnership with ‘In the Bag’, which will distribute nutritious meal kits to hundreds of families struggling to pay for food in these very difficult times”.
The meals kits will be a welcome support to the Sussex community during uncertain times.
If you are struggling to afford food there are food banks and support services available across the city.
You can support the work of the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership here.
Courtesy of Sussex Cricket
