what we’re supporting

TLDR: No child should go to school hungry, but until the government steps in, charities are doing what they can and we’re supporting them.  

What’s the issue?

More than 800,000 children living in poverty are missing out on free school meals. At present, almost 1.9 million children in England get free school meals, but thousands more are left out due to restrictive criteria - like receiving certain benefits. This needs to change.

In 2020, Marcus Rashford launched a high-profile campaign to end child hunger in the UK. Recently, Zayn Malik urged Rishi Sunak to extend the eligibility threshold to include all young people from families on universal credit. The govt has previously said that it would not be possible to expand the scheme in this way, and that charities had underestimated the cost of doing so.

So charities are stepping in?

Yes. Including Magic Breakfast - who provide healthy breakfast food and expert support to help identify and reach pupils at risk of hunger. They believe that a hungry child cannot concentrate, so could miss out on half a day of lessons every school day if not given anything nutritious to eat first thing.

How are you supporting Magic Breakfast?

For every referral we get to our newsletter, we’re donating £0.28 to Magic Breakfast via Work for Good. Working with wonderful charities is a crucial part of our overall mission to empower our readers and help them take action. This cause is especially important to our co-founder Lynn, who is a new mum.

Why tie it to your referral programme and not just donate?

Good question. We're a small, free newsletter, and we need to grow so that a small number of advertisers will work with us (so that we can pay our journalists fairly and continue to publish). Most companies grow through Instagram and Facebook ads, and we know we have to do that too. But we thought, wouldn't it be amazing if we could grow organically through our existing readers, and take the money we would be spending on Facebook and donate it instead? That thinking aligns more with our values here at The Know and that's where the idea came from.

We know children are a very sensitive subject, and rightfully so. We've been using our platform to advocate for government action so charities are not needed, but until then, we’re proud to be able to support Magic Breakfast rather than spend that money on social ads. It was a risk taking on a sensitive subject, and it would've been a lot easier to plant a tree or something of that nature. But child hunger hits us personally, and we wanted to platform it.

Sources: Child Poverty Action Group / Magic Breakfast