Today’s blog comes from Cllr Anna Keen, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Breakfast is often described as the most important meal of the day. We all know that if we want to be at our best at work or with our families, we need to start the day well. This includes eating a healthy meal, as well as starting the day as we mean to go on – by interacting with our friends, family and colleagues.

During the 2016 elections in Bristol, we pledged to do all in our power to ensure that ‘no child goes to school hungry.’ Feeding Bristol, the charity I helped to start, has this as one of it’s key aims. As a mum and a teacher, I see first hand the benefits to a child’s attitude, behaviour, learning and overall wellbeing that eating a good breakfast makes to children.

Sadly, for many families in our city, simply feeding your children each day is a huge challenge. We believe that this is unacceptable and have therefore worked with the charity Fareshare to set up free or low-cost breakfast clubs in many of our schools. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with several of our schools extending this to the whole family and using the early mornings to work on nutrition and cooking skills. It also helps our children get into school on time each day. We would like to see this offer extended to all our schools and last week, Fareshare invited our city’s business community to commit to sponsoring a club in a local school.

You can find out more about how to get involved here: http://faresharesouthwest.org.uk/