LOCKDOWN LEADER: Crystal Palace FC
With professional football in the UK suspended indefinitely during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s great to see clubs stepping up to the penalty area to lob one in for charity. Launched on Monday 27 April, a new initiative sees south London’s Crystal Palace Football Club hooking up with food surplus redistribution charity, City Harvest London, and the Palace for Life Foundation to produce tasty meals for frontline NHS staff and other vulnerable people.
The club’s chefs have been making up to 900 healthy and nourishing meals a week in the club’s Selhurst Park kitchens (being sure to follow social distancing measures of course), which City Harvest’s vans collect and distribute every day. There are four key groups benefiting from the scheme: frontline NHS workers on shift; the locked-down elderly and vulnerable; families facing food poverty; and homeless people – rough sleepers who have been put up in hotels and hostels around the capital.
The Premier League club and its various shareholders are funding the ongoing programme, which covers the cost of the meals and the packaging, while City Harvest London is paying for the distribution. The service will continue for “as long as possible and practical”, says Palace.
Said chief executive of the Palace for Life Foundation, Mike Summers, “We are delighted that the club has asked us to help deliver this initiative along with City Harvest to provide meals to heroic NHS staff working on the frontline and to the most vulnerable members of our communities. It is in keeping with the club’s mission to be a force for good in South London.”
Added City Harvest CEO, Laura Winningham, “It’s wonderful to see people coming together to help their communities. We couldn’t be happier to work with Crystal Palace FC and the Palace for Life Foundation to ensure more meals are made available to those in such great need. We have a wide outreach in South London, this partnership makes a huge impact.”