Greater Manchester businesses offer to support low income families with free school meals
- Hospitality sector across Greater Manchester offer their support for low income families
- Government has left vulnerable families living on the edge
- Businesses pledge to continue ongoing support
The hospitality sector across Greater Manchester has offered up its support to Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign at a time where their own industry is struggling.
The government has failed to bring in measures which will help some of the country’s most vulnerable children.
Business owners across Greater Manchester have taken action to provide food and drink for the children and families the government have left struggling.
Mo Khandoker of Khandoker Didsbury said: “The fact that over 300 MP’s voted against the free school meals campaign shocked us, especially in the pandemic we thought they would be doing as much as possible to help.
“I’ve got kids myself and it touched me that so many people were facing difficulty and struggling to feed their kids over the holidays.
“After Marcus Rashford re-tweeted our support we received a lot more attention and people offering support.
“If the government wasn’t going to do anything about it it’s a good thing local businesses and the community could do something about it.”
The pandemic has been particularly devastating for those in the hospitality industry but the generosity of and sense of community shared by many local business owners has been the only source of help for many families.
“Manchester has a lot of community spirt, you’ve seen through the pandemic a lot of communities and groups come together.
“We’re a small business we can’t work miracles but we can offer food so we’ve been doing that.”
Beth Robins manager of Lime Bar, which has been trading in Salford Quays for 20 years, said: “Public donations and the support on social media have really helped us to feed more of the local community.
“We’re an independently-run business with no chain backing
“We’ve worked from the bottom to be in a fortunate position. We realised we needed to get on board right away and put any money we could aside to help.
“The community have come to us to help keep our business running and we felt it was important to give back.”
Khandoker has pledged to continue support beyond the school holidays and has set up a gofundme page to help continue the campaign.