“The support we provide to the projects, activities and organisations we selected are really important, because they provide a direct benefit to local families and children, by helping the hungry and providing education on healthy eating. Magic Breakfast, St Paul’s Whitechapel Primary School and The Felix Project (Enfield) are just three of the charities we are proud to support, benefiting other families in our local community and beyond.” – Sarah Reynolds
The Felix Project
The Felix Project provides a free door-to-door service to collect surplus food from suppliers, and delivers it to charities. They collect enough food for nearly 3 million meals a year, and deliver it to 270 charities and schools to help the homeless, mentally ill, the elderly, children and disadvantaged families that struggle to afford or buy enough nutritious food.
In 2019, Reynolds donated 18.8 tonnes of produce to The Felix Project, which provided 44,000 meals to a number of the good causes they help.
St. Pauls Primary School, Whitechapel
St. Pauls Primary School is located in an area of London with a particularly high level of child poverty. The school is rightly proud of their innovative Cooking and Nutrition curriculum, which involves teaching children from the ages of 4 to 11 about food – what it is, where it comes from and how it affects their bodies – whilst equipping them with valuable skills for like.
Reynolds provide a weekly donation of fresh produce to St. Paul’s Primary School, which is used by the children to cook some delicious dishes, helping to educate them and their families on the benefits of healthy eating.
Magic Breakfast
Magic Breakfast is a registered charity aiming to end hunger as a barrier to education in UK schools through the provision of healthy breakfasts to vulnerable children.
According to research published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), breakfast clubs that offer pupils in primary schools a free and nutritious meal before school can boost their reading, writing and maths results by the equivalent of two months’ progress over the course of a year.
Reynolds is proud to say that our donation has enabled 500,000 healthy breakfasts to be served every year by Magic Breakfast.
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is the UK’s leading centre for treating seriously ill children and every day 619 seriously ill children arrive at GOSH from all over the UK (figures from 2017/18 financial year). The GOSH Charity Corporate Partnerships team work closely with corporate supporters to support the hospital and are the national charity partner of UK hospitality company, and Reynolds’ customer, Whitbread.
For Easter 2019, Reynolds’ employees donated over 200 Easter eggs and 118 sticker books to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity for the goody bags at their annual Spring Patient Party. We’ve also taken part in various activities to raise money for GOSH, including Ask Italian’s ‘Row Your ASK Off’ challenge and our biennial Family Day event.
Robert Barclay Academy
The Robert Barclay Academy (RBA) is a school based in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, local to our National Distribution Centre (NDC) in Waltham Cross. We help RBA bridge the gap between education and employment through a number of initiatives, including:
- Facilitating the Student Careers Education Programme forum
- Supporting their Dragons Den event
- Holding bi-monthly career talks by Reynolds’ employees and directors to students in years 9 and 10
- Supporting award evenings, with Tony Reynolds as a guest speaker
- Facilitating parent and teacher forums
- Hosting employer encounter and career days at Reynolds NDC, where students spend time with various departments such as Finance and Food Development
- Work placements for students within the business
Our ambition is to continue supporting young people and making them aware of the different opportunities and avenues businesses like ours can offer them after education.
Dallaglio RugbyWorks
Reynolds have partnered with Dallaglio RugbyWorks to help make a difference to young people who haven’t been given a first chance at success. Dallaglio RugbyWorks is an intensive, long-term skills development programme based on rugby, which aims to get teenagers outside of mainstream education and into sustained education, employment or training.
Reynolds have hosted multiple employability days led by a number of our operational colleagues, offering young people an insight in to our business and sharing various employee’s career stories. We also volunteer at and support their Rugby tournaments and events.
Dallaglio Cycle Slam
In May 2012, Tony Reynolds took part in his first Dallaglio Cycle Slam, joining sporting legends Lawrence Dallaglio and Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff in what has been described by organisers as an epic charity cycle ride. Tony took part in the third of five legs of the monumental challenge, cycling a total of 562 kilometres over five consecutive days across Italy, including some gruelling mountain climbs through the Alps.
Tony’s kind supporters helped to raise over £6,000 for charity with donations divided amongst many worthy charities, including Cancer Research UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Since 2012, Tony has continued to take part in the Dallaglio Cycle Slam every other year, with the upcoming 2020 event being held in Spain.
Cancer Research UK/Macmillan Cancer Support
Throughout the year, Reynolds supports both Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support by taking part in various fundraising activities, such as Macmillan’s World’s Largest Coffee Morning and Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life, as well as hosting hold a number of internal competitions and prize draws.
Everyone knows someone who has suffered at the hands of this terrible disease and so we’re proud to be able to do our bit to help these charities support cancer patients and their families.
