Birmingham Rep to help provide 9000 meals for children in poverty

Birmingham Rep will help those in poverty in the city over the coming weeks by providing free meals.

The venue says that, alongside Open Kitchens (a national food solution organisation) it will provide "1,500 nutritional meals per week for children in poverty across the city over an initial six week period, totalling over 9,000 freshly prepared meals".

The venue has been able to gain access to its kitchen in recent weeks and will use a tonne of surplus food from across the hospitality and retail sector. Meals will be prepared by volunteers at the venue and then distributed across Birmingham.

Jules Raikes, catering director at The REP added: "It's fantastic to be able to open up our kitchens for such a worthy cause during a time when a lot of families will be struggling financially. Thousands of children in the city have been schooled at home during the pandemic, which also means for some that they have been missing out on vital access to free school dinners.

"Thanks to our partnership with Open Kitchens and our incredible team of REP volunteers, we are now preparing meals from food that would otherwise go to waste, providing vulnerable children with a regular free nutritional meal during these unprecedented times."

Harrowing statistics say that 8.4 million people in the UK (the entire population of London) are currently strugging to afford to eat. Two million tonnes of food is wasted on a yearly basis in the country.

The Birmingham Rep was recently forced to begin the redundancy consultation process while venues remain locked down, and has also helped by providing medical wear for frontline staff during the highpoint of the pandemic.