The impact of the Trust’s Happy Holiday Club initiative has been highlighted by partners Preston City Council and St Margaret’s Church, Ingol, following their involvement in the summer initiative.
The Happy Holiday Club was designed to support vulnerable children during the summer holidays, particularly those who would ordinarily access free school meals during term-time, by providing free lunches and physical activity sessions for primary school children.
The programme had been set to run at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School and Ingol Community Primary School but delivery was soon cut short due to local lockdown restrictions being introduced in Preston.
Instead, PNECET staff utilised the Community Support Hub initiative and worked alongside local partners, including Preston City Council, delivering 195 food packages to children and their families who should have been accessing the programme.
PNECET worked alongside Morrisons Riversway and Warburtons throughout the initiative whose generous donations of goods were vital in helping to provide food for vulnerable children and families. The initiative was also supported by funding from the Lancashire Covid-19 Community Support Fund.
Preston City Council Community Engagement Officer Vicky Fletcher said: “It’s been really important for Preston City Council and Preston North End to work together, especially at a time like this.
“It’s about joining resources and maximising those resources for the local community. Some communities are very restricted with what facilities and resources that they can access.
“Throughout the pandemic, our focus has been to ensure that children and families who are most in need of food are able to access that. This scheme has really been there to support that.”
Reverend Rie Walker and a team of volunteers from St Margaret’s Church also assisted by working in partnership with their local Co-op in Ingol and using goods from the store to pack lunches for the children and then deliver those to the schools.
Rie said: “We believe we can help wherever we can and support loads of people in the local community by shopping for people, visiting the elderly, keeping in contact with people and doing what we can to support people during the pandemic.
“It’s not just children we are helping but their families as well. It’s serving the local community, which is what we’re all about here.”
For more information about getting involved in future community initiatives, please contact community@pne.com.