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Julian Bowyer raised £8,139 from 160 supporters
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Closed 15/08/2020
Iʼve raised £8,139 to provide lunch every day for 100 at-risk London children who are going hungry at home during the lockdown. We're calling it TheKidzCafe!
- London
- Funded on Saturday, 15th August 2020
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Story
After 3 weeks in lockdown I've been really struggling to know what to do with myself everyday, then I read this quote by Lillian Braun
And I thought to myself "What could I do for someone else?". The answer was easy, do what I do best, and that's cook!! There must be a whole bunch of people who need a decent meal during the Corona lockdown right? So I started to do a little research....here's what I found.
Recent data published by Unicef shows one in five youngsters under 15 in the UK now live in a food insecure home. A recent study of food poverty in the UK found that the families of nearly 4 million children would struggle to afford enough fruit, vegetables and other healthy foods to meet the government’s nutritional guidelines.
In London the situation is even worse with 44% of children living in low-income households and nearly 10% of them (the equivalent of 74,000 children across London) said that they sometimes or often go to bed hungry.
Almost 1.3 million children, about 15% of those in England's state schools, receive free school meals because they come from low income families. For many of these kids the free lunch they receive at school is their main source of nutrition and often their own proper meal of the day.
The data shows the need is greatest in parts of London, especially in Tower Hamlets (where I live) with more than double the national average of families claiming free school meals for their children.
With UK schools closed many of our children are facing hunger and malnutrition on a daily basis. Some schools are providing a lunch pick up service which is only being partially used, the many who can't provide that service offer £3 per day per child in food vouchers. Last time I checked it's almost impossible to buy a decent lunch for just £3, especially in central London!!
So I've teamed up with one of my besties, the fantastic Deanna Smith, founder of https://www.platterandslate.com with the aim to feed at least 100 of these kids every day for the next three weeks, or until the schools reopen.
Billingsgate Seafood School http://www.seafoodtraining.org have generously allowed us to use their kitchen facilities so we're able to maintain strict hygiene standards and physical distancing for our volunteers.
Jean-Paul Chia, another bestie, and high flying management consultant, is keeping us all organised as kitchen manager and volunteer co-ordinator for which we are extremely grateful!!
The food will be mostly vegetarian, sometimes vegan, kid friendly, super tasty and fun to eat. A healthy "happy-meal" moment for these kids who are often at risk, in unsafe home environments and going hungry on a daily basis.
100% of your donation will go towards the food costs and any little toys or sweets we might include to brighten their day. We are budgeting a cost of £3.50 per meal for 100 kids for the next 21 days which is how we arrived at our target of £7350. If the cost per meal is lower then we will be able to make even more lunches. If we exceed our target the more kids we feed and the longer we can continue the service. If we don't meet our target we will use whatever we raise and feed as many as we can.
https://instagram.com/thekidzcafeldn
https://twitter.com/thekidzcafeldn
Updates
3
- 5 years ago
Julian Bowyer
5 years agoThanks to everyone of you for your incredible support. We were able to make over 2200 meals for at risjk kids in London based on your donations. The Kidz Cafe will be open for a few more weeks and will be posting a new challenge on instagram in the hope of raising even more funds. Keep up with all the fun @thekidzcafeldn and thanks again to you all!!!
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- 5 years ago
Julian Bowyer
5 years agoHi everyone!! Thanks to you all we reached our goal to feed 100 kids per day for 3 weeks! The good news is that we managed to land a food cost of just £1.75 per meal so we're able to extend the free lunches for an additional 2-3 weeks. This is welcome news as the lockdown continues and kids remain at-risk and hungry. We'll be launching a new round of fundraising and an exciting online cooking challenge, so stay tuned for more Kidz Cafe fun! Don't forget to follow us on instagram @thekidzcafeldn Thanks again from everyone at The KidzCafe
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- 5 years ago
Julian Bowyer
5 years agoA huge thank you to everyone for all the generous donations. We have achieved over 60% of our funding target in less than a week which is an incredible result!! Today was spent prepping in the kitchen ready for our first deliveries of meals tomorrow. We now also have a name "THE KIDZ CAFE" and an Instagram handle @thekidzcafeldn so please follow us there for regular updates. Finally, can we ask you forward this page to any friends and family who might be able to donate something to the cause as we still have a ways to go to reach our target
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Supporters
160
Laura Cook
Jul 24, 2020
A great initiative, thanks for all you’re doing
Jamie Clark
Jun 29, 2020
Was notified of this by a neighbour Simone Ford such a worthy cause good luck with all of your ongoing fundraising efforts
£100.00
Anonymous
Jun 16, 2020
£20.00
Anonymous
Jun 4, 2020
£20.00
Avdesh Kohli
Jun 1, 2020
Hi. I passed by earlier ( DLR staff). Thank you for your amazing work. Happy to contribute.
Lewis Herlitz
May 20, 2020
Thank you very much for this work which I learnt about from a headmaster at one of the schools you help
£100.00
Anonymous
May 18, 2020
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Julian Bowyer
London
https://instagram.com/thekidzcafeldn https://twitter.com/thekidzcafeldn