by Gianluca Barbazza
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the UK has been hit hard by an unprecedented rising of poverty and difficulties accessing essential goods. As a result, it has had to rely on the help of UNICEF.
For the first time in their 70-year history, the UN agency has started helping the most vulnerable families in the south London borough of Southwark.
With 40% of Southwark’s children considered to be living in poverty, UNICEF, with a £25,000 grant, is aiming to support these kids and their families throughout the February half-term. They also helped out during the past Christmas holidays.
The grant has been sent to the independent charity project School Food Matters, which has used it to guarantee 18,000 breakfasts in 25 different schools. All of this, though, remains unknown to the majority of Londoners.
“It comes right down to food not being a privilege but a right,” Morven Oliver-Larkin of the London Food Poverty Campaign told students at London Metropolitan University yesterday during a Hungry London debate on food insecurity.
Worrying situation
With arguably the highest concentration of billionaires in the world living in the City, London is one of the richest cities in the Euro Zone. But despite the abundance of wealth, the situation for the poorest segments of society remains quite worrying.
Data from YouGov analytics from May 2020, showed that nearly an extra one million children had applied to the government’s free school meals scheme by the end of 2020. Many parents deny themselves food in order to feed their children, the data said.
The government’s position on the matter became clearer when in November 2020, they started the Covid Winter Grant Scheme, which consisted of £170m devolved to local authorities around England in order to provide food and other essentials to the worst hit households.
This scheme though, have found plenty of dissent in some communities so far.
“And we are supposed to think they care about those impacted by Covid?,” the Carney’s Community page wrote recently, while expressing their disappointment on an Instagram post.
Carney’s Community, founded in 2011 and inspired by the boxing legend Mick Carney, is based in Battersea and works with disadvantaged young people between the age of 11 and 30, providing them with mentoring, teaching, support and guidance.
Little government support
Food banks have also been a vital gear of this helping mechanism, but some of them have experiencing issues with supplies since the pandemic began, with little or no support from the government.
“We are funding this completely ourselves. The government should be funding small food banks like ours as the need is only getting greater as more people are losing jobs and are unable to put food on their tables for themselves or even families,” said Emily Bennett, a foodbank/hub coordinator at the Good Shepherd Mission church in Bethnal Green, East London.
Added Leon Aarts of charity With Compassion, which has provided more than half a million free meals to Londoners since March: “Children who go to school hungry – they can’t concentrate well, study well, do your work well. If that goes on for a longer basis it affects your mental health.”
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