Ivinghoe cafe steps up to provide school lunch parcels

Curiositea Rooms' made-up lunch parcels ready for distribution

Hayley Wesley and Sven Tonks, who run Curiositea Rooms have been spending nearly £200 a day out of their own pockets to help struggling families and say whilst they can help, they will.

Now having reached the capacity limit of catering for 83 children (four food parcels a week each), donations have started to come in from locals that want to contribute to sustaining the effort.

Hayley said: “We are so very grateful to everyone who has supported us. Not only are we faced with a lockdown, struggling mentally and everything else that comes with it, now homeschooling is thrown in the mix and parents are struggling to feed their children.

“We started delivering last Monday (January 18) and will be doing so Monday to Friday, until the kids go back to school.

“The families we are feeding just get so emotional and are so appreciative of the help.”

Making sure children don’t go hungry is a hot topic at the moment with high-profile footballer Marcus Rashford leading the fight to secure the government voucher scheme for free school meals through lockdown.

Hayley said: “This isn’t about the government scheme, we are helping anyone who needs it. They may be receiving school meals but as a family they are struggling and that may be the only meal they get. We all know what it’s like to be at home. You tend to eat more so we are supporting anyone who needs help with their children from babies to teenagers.

“As a society it is so sad to see so many people suffering. People need to be made more aware of what is happening on our doorstep as people think it isn’t happening around here as it’s an ‘affluent’ area, they couldn’t be more wrong. This pandemic has affected more people than we could of imagined and more help is needed. We are only doing what we can.”

Each lunch the cafe prepares is varied. They include sandwiches, crisps, fruit, a drink, yoghurt, biscuits and pancakes. Sven and Hayley have done this before too, producing the same for 57 children during last year’s October half term.

If you would like to make a donation you can through Paypal to [email protected]