People’s Postcode Trust

People’s Postcode Trust, a grant giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery, has awarded £20,000 of funding to Chichester District Foodbank’s “Kids Holiday Lunch Pack Scheme” to help reduce child hunger across the District during the school holidays. Research by the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger’ has shown that children who rely on free school meals during term time can find themselves facing hunger in the school holidays, due to the extra financial pressures placed upon their families to provide main meals, adding £30 to £40 a week, to parents’ outgoings per child.   Parents on a low income or Benefits find it hard to meet these costs and children face missing a meal each day. There are over 1000 children who receive free school meals due to low income in the District.

The Scheme provides fortnightly lunch packs to children on free school meals due to low income during the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays.  To ensure the packs get to the right children the foodbank works with the local schools to identify and distribute special vouchers, which their families bring to one of the 4 foodbank centres (Chichester, Selsey, Midhurst & Petworth) and exchange it for a kid’s lunch pack. This Christmas we gave out lunch packs to 435 children.

One Mum said:

“The voucher and food meant that we had a good holiday rather than a fraught one, it made such a huge difference.”

Joanne Kondabeka, Project Manager of Chichester District Foodbank said:

“We are so grateful to People’s Postcode Trust for their support to help us reduce child hunger across the District. Their grant will help sustain the Kids Holiday Lunch Pack Scheme for the next year, paying for a co-ordinator, meeting the running costs and helping the foodbank extend the scheme across the Chichester senior schools.”

The foodbank relies on the support of the local community and welcomes any new offers of help with funding – local businesses, organisations and individuals interested in supporting the foodbank’s work can find out more at www.chichesterdistrict.foodbank.org.uk

For those who would like to donate food they can find foodbank collection baskets in all the local supermarkets, Chichester Cathedral and County Hall.

For more information about the People’s Postcode Trust, please visit their website http://www.postcodetrust.org.uk

If you would like to support more charities by playing the People’s Postcode Lottery, please visit their website at http://www.postcodelottery.co.uk