Words by Abi Scaife
A student at The Margate School has created a map of free school meals during the school holidays.
We know how important free school meals are, and how difficult things can be when they aren’t available to you. That’s why we caught up with Erin Byrne, the creator of Faversham Family Food Map, who is hoping other areas take inspiration from her work and create something similar.
More than 1,500 copies of the map have been distributed to primary school children across Faversham, helping families across the town to access free meals.
I study at the Margate School and part of the course was to create a live design project to address a local social or environmental issue. I live in Faversham and my daughter goes to school locally so I am very aware of the issues around childhood food poverty and in particular how difficult it is for families to during the long summer holidays.
I wanted to use my skills to help address this problem and create a beautiful and engaging map for children and families that would raise awareness of what help is available and also help release stigma around accessing free food.
I hope it will help families who are struggling to access free food during the holidays. But I also hope the map will also raise awareness of the incredible community and faith organisations and family services available in Faversham, lead by hard working volunteers. I also hope it may inspire other towns and cities to do the same.
Communication is very important when addressing food poverty. Busy families often struggle to have the time to seek out help, especially when information is scattered and in different places. The idea of the map is it has all the information in one place. Also, there can be a sense of shame associated with seeking help, so the map is designed for everyone - I made an effort not to outwardly target a specific audience.
It initially started as a project about child food poverty and creating a well-designed map. However, it was the relationships I forged along the way and all the generosity and help I received personally during the project from local community and faith organisations in the Faversham Community Networking Group that was the most transformational. It went from a personal student project to a genuine community collaboration, which was amazing.
I was very surprised, and it made it all the more important to share the information with as many people as possible - not many people know what is available to them.
We are hopefully working on a simpler version that can be updated and distributed by the Faversham Community Networking Group going forward- which would be a great legacy to the project. I hope other towns copy us and other maps pop up all over the UK.
You can access the Faversham Family Food Map by following this link.
At Smiley Movement, we like to elevate the work of charities across the world. Here are three charities whose causes align with the themes in this article.
Grow to Give. This charity connects local farmers and hobby growers to donate surplus fresh produce to food banks. Find out how to support them here.
The Felix Project. They collect fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold and delivers this surplus food to charities and schools. Support them here.
FareShare. The UK's largest charity fighting hunger and food waste, they save good food from going to waste and redistribute it to frontline charities. Find out more.
