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More than a million school meals have now been donated by Cook, the UK ready meals retailer, since it formed a partnership with One Feeds Two, the charity set up in 2013 to feed hungry children in the world’s poorest countries.
Cook makes a contribution funding one school meal every time it sells a product showing the charity’s logo.
The meals from Cook have all gone to children living in poverty in Malawi.
The project is intended both to relieve hunger and to ensure the children are healthy enough to attend school.
The company said: “All Cook Kids Meals now carry the logo, so when your child eats so does another at school in Africa.”
The retailer aims to have provided two million school meals in deprived areas by 2020.
Another charity backed by Cook is Caring Hands in the Community, an organization based in Kent, near the company’s headquarters, which supplies meals and other assistance for the area’s disadvantaged people.
The company reports: “We’ve donated several freezers, so whenever we have leftover ingredients we freeze them and send them over, helping them provide around 1,500 meals a week.
“We also support Caring Hands through staff volunteering, including cooking a proper Christmas lunch for them on December 25.”
One Feeds Two says it is “knocking on the doors” to recruit more businesses to follow Cook’s example.
Founder James Campbell – known to everybody as JP – said: “We think our model can provide millions of meals a day if we get the right brands and enough business engaged with it.
“The ultimate aim of the programs we work with is to build a school feeding programme that can eventually be supported and run by the governments in the respective countries.
“It’s all about education and empowerment rather than aid and dependency.”
A recent UN World Food Programme estimate is that every day 66 million children go to school hungry, 23 million of them in Africa, and another 61 million fail even to go to school because of hunger and poverty. The UN calculates that $3.2bn (£2.4bn, €2.7bn) is needed annually to reach all 66 million hungry schoolchildren.
