Fitzwilliam College collaborated with Cambridge Sustainable Food (CSF) last week to prepare 200 meals for families supported by CSF, who may have otherwise gone hungry over the half-term period.

A statement from the College told Varsity that “Fitzwilliam College was pleased to provide 200 meals last week to families supported by Cambridge Sustainable Food.”

The spokesperson continued: “The meals were prepared by our kitchens, and we were grateful to one of our suppliers, Rennet & Rind, who transported the meals to the hub in their refrigerated van.”

Cambridge Sustainable Food “is an innovative and growing partnership of public, private and community organisations in Cambridge and the surrounding villages, [working] with each other to promote a vibrant local food system all along the supply chain and in our community”.

One of the areas on which CSF work is their Key Issue 2, ‘Food Poverty, Ill Health and Healthy Food Access’.

As part of their work in this area, CSF convene the Cambridge Food Poverty Alliance: “a multi-agency partnership which aims to reduce food poverty locally” by promoting the living wage, campaigning to increase uptake of Healthy Start Vouchers and promoting organisations which support people experiencing or at risk of food poverty.

The collaboration between Fitzwillian and CSF may also extend into the future, with the College commenting that they “will be speaking to CSF in the coming weeks about how [they] might support [CSF’s] valuable work over Christmas.”

The partnership comes as MPs defeated a motion tabled by the Labour Party in support of Marcus Rashford’s campaign to extend Free School Meals over the school holidays by 321 to 261 votes. The vote meant the government did not provide food vouchers to families over the recent half term.