The money will help provide food for thousands of children in Bristol who are at risk of going without during the holiday period, in a bid to prevent families having to make a choice whether to heat or eat.
Bristol has one of the highest rates of child hunger in the country, with one in five children receiving free school dinners during term time. The Healthy Holidays programme aims to provide over 50,000 meals for children all over the city during the six week holiday period.
Working together to fight poverty in Bristol
Our two Bristol based organisations were founded with the intention of alleviating poverty in the city. Working together we have explored different ways of helping those who are experiencing both food and fuel poverty.
Our teams have worked on creating marketing collateral to help vulnerable people manage their money more effectively, and also played a significant role in enacting the citywide focus group ‘No Cold Homes’, whose aim is to bring organisations across the city together to find solutions to Bristol’s fuel poverty problem, making sure no one suffers a cold home by 2030.
One of Bristol Energy’s founding objectives is to support the city in its efforts to alleviate fuel poverty. But food and fuel poverty go hand in hand. The difficult choice between ‘heating or eating’ faces around 25,000 households in Bristol. We strongly believe that fuel poverty and food poverty are best tackled together.
- Marek Majewicz, Managing Director, Bristol Energy
Continuing to work together for our community
We will continue to work closely with Feeding Bristol to identify opportunities to provide holistic food and fuel poverty advice to support communities across Bristol, in an effort to deliver sustainable services that reach vulnerable people in a comfortable and safe environment.
The response to the Healthy Holidays programme from businesses across the city has been amazing, and we’re hugely grateful for the contribution that Bristol Energy has made. Going forward partnership and collaboration is essential if we’re going to move people out of food and fuel poverty; the clear indications are that the city is committed to seeing this happen over the coming years.
- Andy Street, Chair, Feeding Bristol