Tesco customers buying fruit or vegetables in their local stores in London or online will be helping to support thousands of children living in food insecurity.
From today (Monday 21 March) until Sunday 3 April, Tesco will give a donation when customers top up their trollies with healthy fruit and vegetables in store or online at Tesco.com during the supermarket’s Buy One to Help a Child event.
The cash donated by Tesco from sales of all types of fruit and vegetables will enable its food redistribution charity partner FareShare to help thousands of children’s charities across the UK who rely on regular donations to help families and young people in communities get the food and help they need.
Last summer, the Tesco Buy One to Help a Child event saw customers fully supporting the campaign by buying armfuls of avocados and apples and bags of broccoli and bananas, amongst many other family favourites, every time they shopped.
FareShare received the equivalent of more than three million meals’ worth of food, which has been redistributed to frontline charities and community groups working with children – handing out food parcels to families, sending snacks to holiday clubs and breakfast clubs and giving ingredients to community kitchens.
In London the campaign saw 339,538 meals-worth of food donated supporting 640 frontline charities working with children and families.
One of the groups to have benefitted from this Is Highams Park Food aid, an initiative that started during the first coronavirus lockdown, which has set up a food fund that operates twice a week for people to drop in and pick up items.
“We just found that so many people needed food,” explains Tracey Rogers from Highams Park Food Aid. “We wanted to give people dignity back, so we run almost like a shop. People can take what they need and all the food is from FareShare. We work with our local Tesco store at Higham’s Park and the community champion and they’ve helped with a trolley in-store that people can donate to.”
Buy One to Help a Child is just one of Tesco’s community programmes helping to build stronger communities across the UK.
Richard Smith, Supply Chain Manager at the Felix Project, which has operated in partnership with FareShare and worked with Tesco since 2016 to redistribute over 130m meals of the supermarket’s surplus food to date, said the donation would make a real difference to frontline charities working with children, and thanked Tesco customers.
“The Tesco Buy One to Help a Child campaign makes such a difference to us because it helps us to support children and families London during the school holidays. So many of the children that we provide food for would normally rely on free school meals during term-time but they do not get access to this support during the holidays.
“Supporting the needs of children early in their life is very important to FareShare as we see what a difference access to healthy food can make in young peoples’ lives. In our tenth year of partnership, we are very grateful for Tesco and their ongoing commitment to help FareShare redistribute good to eat food to thousands of charities across the UK.”
Jason Tarry, Tesco UK and ROI CEO, said: “FareShare do amazing work supporting frontline charities, and the food they distribute is making a real difference to young people and families in every part of the UK.
“Every time Tesco customers put a piece of fruit in their basket until Sunday, April 3 Tesco will make a donation to FareShare, giving a little extra help to support them in their vital work, ensuring even more children can enjoy healthy and nutritious food.”
Tesco is a member of the Child Poverty Task Force, formed by Marcus Rashford, and continues to support his campaign for free school meals for every child that needs them, at any time.
