By Charity sending aid to UK children
UNICEF is to feed hungry children in the UK for the first time in its 70-year history.
It has launched a domestic emergency response in the UK to help families hit by the COVID-19 crisis.
The UN humanitarian aid agency is providing more than £700,000 in emergency funding.
Money will go to “over 30 communities up and down the” country.
The UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide has likened the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on youngsters to that of the Second World War.
Anna Kettley, Director of Programmes at Unicef UK, told LBC radio: “We know that the coronavirus pandemic is the most urgent crisis affecting children since the Second World War and it is ending children’s lives everywhere, including right here at home.
“We know that before the pandemic 2.4 million children across the UK were already growing up in food insecure households and that since the lockdown period and the ongoing crisis, 32 percent of households have experienced a drop of income.
“Some families are having to make some really difficult decisions right now between heating and eating.”
As part of the £700,000 Unicef funding , a £25,000 grant will be given to the School Food Matters charity in the London borough of Southwark, with the money used to supply over 20,000 breakfasts to children during the holidays.
Each breakfast box given out will provide enough food for 10 breakfasts across the Christmas holiday.
Since the first national lockdown in March, the number of families struggling to make ends meet and access food has grown, as the economy has suffered and vital jobs been lost.
In May, a YouGov poll commissioned by the charity Food Foundation found that 2.4 million children (17%) were living in food insecure households. And by October it said an extra 900,000 children had been registered for free school meals.
Photo: School Food Matters
