Tesco announced that they are pleased to be working with Driffield’s Kings Mill Special School, Beverley Cherry Tree Community Centre and Olio food sharing app and social enterprise in their Community Food Connection programme.
As part of their pledge to cut food waste, the scheme supports schools, charities and community groups, enabling them to donate surplus unsold food items at the end of each day. In the last 12 months over 15,700 meals have been donated to these and other local community groups from the Beverley store.
Tesco Beverley’s Community Champion Dave Ryley recently visited Kings Mill Special School to see how the donations were benefiting their pupils.
Head Teacher Alison Hall said: ‘‘We are so very grateful to Tesco for their continued support. The donations are gratefully received by all classes across the school and provide a range of foods to support breakfast club and snack time.
Alongside this many of our pupils, due to the nature of their additional needs, have complex eating habits. They are often 'picky eaters' with food anxiety. At school we are often best placed to provide encouragement to 'give it a go' and one of the ways that we do this is through sensory food experiences, without the pressure of eating. These give the children exposures and information that make them more comfortable with new foods. This way, children can explore food without the expectation to consume it.
We often get a lot of flowers too and we take great delight in handing these out to the staff. We take the well-being of our staff very seriously as the job can have its challenges and the flowers just add a little extra.
Thank you again to Tesco for their continued support of the school and the staff and pupils that we support. We rely heavily on the local community and I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize the amazing staff who work in our local Driffield Tesco store.
The staff go out of their way to support the learning for our pupils when they are out in the community as we use the store to teach pupils to become independent shoppers. They are so very patient and give our pupils the time they need.’’
Tesco still have some nights available for other groups to also benefit from the scheme.
Please contact Dave Ryley: 07736 483690 / beverley.community@tesco.com if you
would like more information.
