General Mills, the leading global food company, announces its latest move to #endfoodpoverty by signing up to support Marcus Rashford’s Child Poverty Task Force. By joining the Task Force, General Mills stands shoulder to shoulder with its industry peers in supporting policy recommendations designed to keep child food poverty at the top of the government’s agenda.
Backing this campaign means supporting the three main policy recommendations in the National Food Strategy:
- Providing meals to an additional 1.5 million children aged between seven and 16 year via the expansion of free school meals to every child from a household on Universal Credit or equivalent.
- Allowing an additional 1.1 million children access to free school meals by expanding holiday provision (food and activities).
- Expanding the budget allocated from the Healthy Start vouchers from £3.10 to £4.25 and broadening to include those on Universal Credit or similar to reach an additional 290,000 pregnant women and children under the age of four.
Ben Pearman, VP Managing Director of Northern Europe at General Mills. said: “It simply cannot be right, in 2020 Britain, that children are going to school hungry.
“As a global food company, we feel duty bound to play our part in reducing food poverty and have a long tradition of work in this area.
“We are therefore delighted to join Marcus Rashford’s impressive Task Force Team which is playing an important part in drawing attention to this issue which has an appalling impact on millions of children in the UK.
“Supporting local communities and food protection are causes which are core to our values and we will continue working with our Breakfast Club Network and Rethink Food to support those who otherwise would not know where their next meal is coming from.”
Supporting the Cause:
Via the General Mills Foundation, the Group donated $20 million (£15.4 million) to tackling food poverty last year. It has given more than £1 million to tackling the issue in the UK over the past three years and an extra $5 million (£3.9 million) worldwide during the coronavirus crisis.
In the UK, General Mills has provided over $200,000 to charities including the leading food redistribution charity FareShare and our local Foodbank in Hillingdon, West London. We support several other initiatives tacking food poverty, including a nationwide breakfast club scheme through which we fund a free breakfast for 5,000 schoolchildren in the UK. General Mills also supports breakfast clubs in approximately 72 schools via its partnership with ReThinkFood, donating £25k to enable them to expand their operations in Leeds and Bradford during the school summer holidays. Rethink has massively increased the amount of food it distributes – from 7 tonnes to 25 – our donation has enabled them to cope with the increased supply efficiently and has allowed them to expand their operations.
