Kellogg's Give A Child A Breakfast Campaign

Have you noticed something recently, on the telly, or your morning cereal?  Kellogg's have launched their Give a Child a Breakfast campaign.   And they want you to get involved.

Shockingly, an average of 2.4 children in every class go to school each day without having had breakfast, which is over 10% of the average class size.  That can impact on their concentration, their energy levels, and ultimately, their educational achievements.  I know if I haven't had breakfast, I'm sleepy, dopey, and grumpy until I get something to eat (never mind the other 4 dwarves!).  Imagine how that feels when you don't have the option of hitting the coffee machine & office biscuit tin.  That's why breakfast clubs exist.  They give children the chance to have a healthy, balanced breakfast, in the company of their school friends, free of charge.  Arriving to school hungry means a child loses the equivalent of an hour's learning a day!

For some families, that means that they can afford maybe to keep the heating on a little later in the evening, some fresh veg to go with their tea, the cash to join in with a school trip.  For others, it means that their child is safe and supervised if parents start work early in the morning.  That may be all the difference between a parent being able to work, and not.  It improves the chances of the whole family.  Did you ever think a box of cornflakes could do so much?

Squeaky's school has a breakfast club, and when she's in the morning group at the nursery class, I hope that she'll be joining her friends and other children at the club.  I honestly believe that it'll help her learn about a balanced diet, and provide her with a great start to the day.

If you follow this link you can donate breakfasts free of charge, just by using the social sharing buttons, or watching the video.  Kellogg's are aiming to donate 2 million breakfasts to breakfast clubs across the UK through this campaign, as part of a wider aim to donate 15 million breakfasts in the UK by the end of 2016 through breakfast clubs and donations to foodbanks (a cause I've blogged about before), and an incredible half a billion breakfasts worldwide to people in need.

Watch out soon for another opportunity to help out your local breakfast club.

Disclosure: I have not received payment for this post. I will be hosting a further post in relation to this topic shortly.

Information in this post has been obtained from "A Lost Education: The reality of hunger in the classroom" published by Kellogg's, with answers arising from a YouGov survey of 762 teachers in June and July 2013.

Cooking up savings

We were talking in the office today about cooking, and how one of our clients had told my colleague she cooks all her veg & potatoes in the same saucepan to cut down on the cost.  It got me to thinking - I'd read something recently about how 4% of the average household energy bill goes on cooking, according to uswitch.  There's loads of tips online on how to reduce your heating costs, and cutting your food bill, but what if we could cut the cost of cooking the food as well?  So I sat down with my pen & paper (I'm OldSkool, you see) and got to thinking.

My steamer, hard at work

• Use a steamer. Rather than cooking everything in one pan like our client above, use a steamer set. That way you keep more of the goodness in the veg, you can add layers at different times for things that take less time to cook. You also save water, only boiling one pan, and use only one burner instead of three.
• Use pans with lids.  Lids keep the steam, and therefore the heat, in the pan, so you need less energy to keep the water boiling - and your kitchen is a more pleasant place to be.
• Use the smallest pan for your needs.  There's no point using a massive soup pan to boil one egg - it takes more water, and more energy to heat.  Small pans boil quicker.
• Use the right sized burner.  Don't put your tiny pan on the big burner, most of the energy will be wasted heating fresh air, and don't put your big pan on the tiny burner, or you'll be waiting til Christmas.
• Keep the oven door closed.  Don't peek inside every few minutes, no matter how tempting it is. Your cakes won't rise, and if you're cooking my Never Failed Yorkshire Puddings I will get really cross with you.
• Bulk cook.  If you've got the oven on for Sunday lunch, why not put pudding in at the same time?  Or a cake for tea?  Or a pie for later in the week?  The oven's on, and it's cheaper to reheat something in the microwave than to cook it from scratch another day.  Use the energy you're already using.

A lot of the people I work with are in fuel poverty - spending more than 10% of their income on heating their home (and as fuel for cooking comes from the same source, naturally that must be included).  Little tips like these can make a big difference - it can mean a family's home is adequately warm for their children, that their children go to school having had a decent night's sleep following a home-cooked meal. Money is tight for everyone at the moment, so maybe these little tips could help you, or someone you know?  I hope so.

This is not a sponsored post, I have not received payment for writing it. I am aware that there are sponsored posts at present on a similar subject, however this post was inspired by a conversation at work, and is not related to those posts. Links are provided for convenience only, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme & will not receive reward for their use.

Retail Royalty Challenge with Money Supermarket

Money Supermarket.  You know them, the price comparison people that DON'T have a really annoying advert.  Well, they've set a challenge to bloggers.  On signing up, and picking a charity, they sent me £30 and challenged me to get shopping.

It was a difficult decision to pick a charity to support.  After all there's so many.  I work for a charity myself, it would be so easy to find ways to spend that money on our services, but they get my time, and the sweat of my brow on a daily basis, I couldn't do that!  People might get the wrong idea!  So I thought a bit wider, and about some of the charities that support the work we do.  That's when it came to me, and I paid a visit to the Merthyr Cynon Foodbank, part of the Trussell Trust.

The work they do amazes me.  This is the 21st Century, we're a developed nation, filled with internet, mobile phones, satellite tv, cars, double glazing, and the kind of comforts people in the developing world aspire to, comforts that only a couple of generations ago wouldn't even have been dreamt of.  And yet every night, here in the UK people are going to bed hungry, parents are going without food to make sure their children are fed, people are relying on local foodbanks in order to get a decent meal.  In the 18 months since the Merthyr Cynon Foodbank opened their doors, they've fed over 3,500 people.  Over 1200 children.  And that's just in one small area of South Wales.  There's over 350 foodbanks in the UK, and they fed over 350,000 people last year.

The foodbank provides 3 days worth of emergency food, non-perishable & nutritious food to get people through a crisis - losing a job, benefit delays, banking problems.  And they're amazing people too.  Whenever you visit our local foodbank centre, they greet you at the door with a smile and a free cuppa, a chat, advice, a friendly welcoming place to go when the world seems a bit greyer than usual.  They're a ray of sunshine.

As I said, I paid the foodbank a visit, and asked them for their wishlist, which items were they most in need of?  They hold collections at the local supermarkets & through churches, but obviously what they receive through that can be a bit hit & miss, so I wanted to make sure I spent my £30 on the items they needed the most.  I was asked for variety packs of breakfast cereal (so they can split them up for single people, rather than giving huge boxes), 500g bags of sugar, and tinned fruit.

So, armed with my shopping list, I hit the internet, and browsed mysupermarket.co.uk to see who had the best deals, and marched around the local discounter stores to see if they could beat them.  I found my best bargains, and popped out to fill my car.  And fill it I did!  What you can see in the picture below is: 12 variety packs of breakfast cereal, each containing 8 boxes, 16 500 gram bags of sugar, and 11 tins of mandarin oranges.

My haul!

I got some rather odd looks in the supermarket when I filled my trolley up with this little lot, let me tell you!  But it came to a grand total of £30.08.  I subbed them the 8p, it's the least I can do.

I was amazed how much I could get for my £30.  I really didn't think I'd get a trolley load.  It sounds like an insignificant sum, I know I spend way more than that a week on our shopping, but I managed to buy so much food, that will make a real difference to people in crisis.  Someone will be able to go to bed tonight having eaten well, be able to get up in the morning & have a decent breakfast, and that could make all the difference.

Many thanks to Money Supermarket for giving me the opportunity to support their work.

This is my entry to the Retail Royalty Challenge, from Money Supermarket.

Debt - a Four Letter Word

When I was approached recently regarding linking up with the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, the UK's leading debt charity, I knew it was something I wanted to write about.  I don't talk about my work on here, but I'm a debt & benefit advisor for a major children's charity.  Yes, you've heard of us, even if you've been living in a cave.  I don't talk about work because, apart from the fact that I try to keep home & work separate, it's important to maintain my clients' confidentiality.

But when CCCS got in touch, and wanted bloggers to help raise awareness of the work they do, and how debt affects families, I thought hard about how I could do this.  I tried to write a "day in the life" type post, but it's really hard to fictionalise, and I wouldn't want people to think they could identify someone.  But instead, I want to tell you a little about the kind of people I work with.

• I work mostly with families with children, because I work for a children's charity.  I also work with young people who have experienced homelessness, or are care leavers. Often they've got themselves into debt because they haven't got the family support networks to fall back on, but want the same choices as everyone else.
• Many of my clients are in relationships. Some are lone parents, but by no means the majority.
• Many of my clients are working.  Often for long hours and low pay, with little stability, which can be what puts them at risk of falling behind with payments.

We're in a hotbed for what MP Stella Creasy called "legal loan sharks", and many of my clients have debts to coin-op tv lenders, high-street hire-purchase companies, doorstep lenders, and payday loan companies, all with extortionate rates of interest.  They can quickly fall into a spiral of debt, as the repayments fast outstrip the loan amount, with no clear repayment date in sight.  (I am not linking to examples of any of the above types of lenders. They do not deserve the benefit of my traffic, and in no way do I encourage you to use them.)

Where clients have just a few debts and they ask me to do so, I negotiate with them and the creditors directly, to establish a repayment plan.  But in many cases, the debts are too large, across too many creditors, and in those cases, I refer clients to a Debt Management agency.  There's a lot of companies that offer this service, you'll see them advertise on tv.  But those companies make a profit out of the debt, which isn't really the point.  There are charities, of which CCCS is one, who offer this service for free.  Depending on the clients' preference, we choose which charity they want to be referred to, and I act as a liaison, introducing clients to charities, making sure everything is going OK, and that the clients are happy with the situation, are keeping within their agreed budget, and making the payments that are then distributed to their creditors.

Really, I wanted to write this post to make my readers aware that there is help available.  And that help can come in at any stage, but the earlier you start, the easier it is to get debts back under control.  Debt can happen to anyone, and no-one will judge you for asking for help.  If anything in this post rings true, please don't hesitate.

CCCS have put together a video, featuring one of their clients, explaining a bit more about what they do, and how they can help.  Take a look.



This is not a sponsored post. I have not been told what to write. While I was approached to write a post, I agreed to do so as this is a subject I feel strongly about. I have not received any compensation or incentive for posting it. Links are provided for your convenience only.