Rethink Food @ CCA

Objectives of Rethink Food

• Remove hunger as a barrier to learning

• Reduce the amount of perfectly edible food that goes to waste

• Educate communities to make responsible choices about food for a sustainable future

Our school is part of the rethink food project and have been committed to this since January 2016. Just before this, we took part in a trial day where we gave every child in the school a free breakfast and this was a huge success. We also did a survey of every child in the school and found that many children were going without breakfast.

Since then, we have supported the rethink project in reducing food waste through providing a weekly market stall for our community. On our market stall, we provide a range of food which is perfectly safe which supermarkets would otherwise destroy, causing additional cost to the consumer and further damage to our planet. Our market stall runs on a ‘Pay As You Feel’ basis and any donations made by families are used to further enhance the project in school.

As well as our market stall, we also provide every child with a breakfast every morning in school. Approximately 1000 breakfasts are given every week meaning that no child starts their learning feeling hungry or lacking in energy. By July 2018, our school had given over 100,000 breakfasts and we know that this has helped our school improve attendance, punctuality and overall learning outcomes.

In the news!

The school has featured in The Telegraph and Argus on several occasions, celebrating the work of Rethink Food (formerly Fuel for School)  at Christ Church Academy. As we were one of the first schools in Bradford to be involved in the project, we featured in a column focused on the issue of food waste.  

Our staff were also in the news when a team took on the ‘Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge’ in an attempt to raise enough money to pay for the Fuel for School service level agreement. Here they are on the top of Whernside.

Our staff commitment

It was wonderful that a staff team were willing to take part in the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge. As well as this, they also showed wonderful commitment by taking part in a ‘Hunger morning’ where they went without food for a morning to see how this made them feel when they were trying to work as hard as normal. This is what they said:

On the day after this, they came to work without breakfast once more. This time, however, they were greeted by a breakfast in the staffroom which we hoped would give them a little boost. This experience really reminded us of the value of providing every one of our wonderful children a breakfast every morning.