EAT UP STEPS UP THE FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER
According to the Foodbank Hunger Report 2022, over the last 12 months, 1.3 million children in Australia lived in severely food insecure households, a problem that has been exacerbated nationwide by cost-of-living increases, natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Going to school, like most other things in life, is much harder on an empty stomach.
Lack of adequate nutrition can profoundly impact a child’s ability to get the most from their time at school. Put simply in the words of one school principal: “When children go hungry, they cannot concentrate; if they can’t concentrate, they can’t learn.”
Eat Up is a grassroots charity that works to combat hunger in the classroom by providing free sandwiches to students at more than 650 schools throughout Australia.
When Eat Up expanded its operations to Western Australia in 2021, there were no free school lunch programs in the state; it now supports more than 3,600 students at around 110 schools in regional and metropolitan WA, and sadly, demand continues to grow.
With support from the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation, Eat Up is working to further expand this program to meet the growing need for food relief in WA schools.
Between 2022 and 2023, the charity expects to prepare and distribute more than 108,000 lunches to students in Perth and its surrounds. As well as being nutritious, Eat Up’s lunches are cost effective, thanks to partnerships with food distributors and volunteers’ efforts in sandwich-making workshops.
Eat Up Executive Officer Elise Cook said that funding provided by the Foundation over the next three years will make a lasting difference to thousands of WA families.
“It is going to make a significant impact, enabling us to deliver lunches for vulnerable children in Western Australia, helping them to reach their potential as they learn, grow and succeed,” Elise said.
Eat Up was founded in 2013 when Lyndon Galea, a university student living in his hometown of Shepparton, Victoria, read in the local newspaper that kids regularly went to school without lunch. With the help of some friends and his mum, he made 200 sandwiches and dropped them off at local schools. The response he received compelled him to continue and then expand.
In 2015, Eat Up was established as a charity and has since expanded to support 650 schools across New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.
Visit eatup.org.au to find out more.
“Our school is in a very low socioeconomic area and our families struggle each and every day. Despite that, it doesn’t mean they don’t care and for us, being able to support them and their children in any way allows us to develop relationships built on trust. Our parents trust us and know they can ring and ask us to feed their children. They receive no judgement and ultimately, it means the children are fed and still attending school. It’s simply a win win situation for everyone.”
Published: 29 November 2022