For two years running, Active Essex have been leading a county-wide Holiday Hunger programme, providing face to face holiday activity clubs and free meals to children and families in need. With support and funding from Essex County Council, we have been able to work with a network of locally trusted organisations to ensure that everyone who needs support during the school holidays across Essex can access it. Since the summer of 2020, the Holiday Hunger programme has engaged with 3000 young people across the county.
We were keen to continue providing this service over the February half-term, despite the national restrictions in place due to COVID-19. We have seen first hand how important it is for young people to feel safe and nourished, so that they can thrive and lead active and healthy lives. This of course meant adapting our service to continue to support others safely.
Rather than hosting face to face activity clubs last week, Active Essex, along with local organisations and charities, were able to provide over 2800 families in Essex with food boxes, activity packs, menu cards and wellbeing packs. We also provided virtual cooking, craft, wellbeing and activity sessions via our ‘Keeping Essex Active’ YouTube channel. Residents were able to cook along with us using the ingredients in their boxes as we focused on nutrition and cooking on a budget. Children of all abilities were able to get active with our physical activity sessions.
The adapted Holiday Hunger programme was a great success. One parent, Mrs Cross wrote to us and said: “I just wanted to say thank you for organising the food packages to the children and families who have suffered financially during covid. My son is registered disabled and I don’t drive, so I really appreciate your team’s help in dropping our parcel to us. You have no idea how much help extra groceries are, during half term when my son is home, to us. I can provide him a hot meal for lunch and dinner now without worrying how huge my weekly shopping bill will be. You’re doing a brilliant thing here for the community.”
Sarah and Jonny also received the Holiday Hunger food box. Sarah said: “Thank you so much for delivering our pack – it was so, so welcome and full of lovely things. My son is autistic with complex needs and couldn’t write it, but he helped build a heart out of all the food and asked me to write a thank you so this is from him. So lovely to be shown such kindness in these times. You guys are amazing.”
Alexa, Active Essex’s Holiday Hunger project lead was really pleased with the delivery of the new service. She said: “This programme has really showcased the strong connections Active Essex have been building over the last two years with our network of over 100 locally trusted organisations. This network has shown that they can not only connect with local families and reach the heart of their communities but supported by the fantastic team at Active Essex, they can pull together to deliver a consistent county wide offer.”
The Holiday Hunger programme is set to continue over the Easter holidays. The trial of the new adapted service that took place over the last week has provided an insight on how to do this on a much larger scale. Alongside food packs, Active Essex are analysing the data from February’s trial to find out how best to deliver online content to ensure a bigger impact.
Alexa commented: “It has been a real privilege to be able to lead and coordinate this programme. The learning curve on this project was steep but initial feedback has all been incredibly positive and we look forward to learning and moving forward to deliver an even bigger programme for Easter.”
