Northampton Saints Foundation inspired by Marcus Rashford to provide 3,000 free school meals this summer

The UK government has committed to providing free school meals to children in England during the 2020 summer holidays, thanks to Manchester United player Marcus Rashford. Picture: Getty Images.

Northampton Saints Foundation and Greencore are delivering 100 free meals a day to young people in Northampton this summer, starting on the first week of the school holidays.

It comes as Boris Johnson made a U-turn in June over providing food vouchers on for some of England’s poorest families during the school holidays after a campaign was launched by the footballer Marcus Rashford.This new initiative will ensure that over 100 students – who would be entitled to free school meals during term time – are still supplied with lunches during the summer holidays.

Foundation staff will transport meals directly to three different schools daily, whey they will meet students aged between six and 16 to drop off the food.

The Saints Foundation will be handing out sandwiches every morning to hungry children during the school holidays.

The children will be chosen by the pastoral teams at the schools and shall be asked to wear a wristband to collect their food every morning.

One of the schools taking part is St James Primary. Sophie Moore said: “We have worked with the Northampton Saints Foundation for some years now, working to engage our pupils and create more opportunities for them."

“We are delighted that Saints Foundation have offered to work with us and support our school community over the summer break, providing meals for some of our families in need.”

Greencore is a large employer within Northampton and already donates lunches for 30 students participating in Foundation programmes every day.

Catherine Deans, managing director at Saints Foundation, added: “We were really motivated by Marcus Rashford’s school meals campaign, and knew we needed to do what we could to help.

“We immediately contacted our food partner, Greencore, and they agreed to support us without a moment’s hesitation.

“We are very grateful to Greencore for enabling this vitally important work to take place over this summer – the pandemic has created unprecedented challenges throughout our community, and we hope that this food donation can make a small difference to those in need.”