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FT readers have generously donated over £211,000 to the “Feed the Future” campaign to provide secondary school pupils in deprived areas with a healthy breakfast and financial skills training on the side.
The fundraiser, jointly run over the Christmas and new year period by the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign (Flic) and the charity Magic Breakfast, included a £51,000 match-funded donation from the Rosetrees Trust.
After reaching its baseline target of £100,000, the appeal was extended the deadline by a week, until Friday February 7, thanks to a late intervention from the Rosetrees Trust, which generously offered to match-fund donations to get us to a new £200,000 target.
So if you haven’t yet given, please do consider supporting our work at ftflic.com. Individual and corporate donations alike will be enormously appreciated.
Proper nutrition via healthy breakfasts at school, such as those provided by Magic Breakfast, boosts the capacity of young people — many of whom would otherwise go hungry and struggle to concentrate — to learn.
FLIC’s work boosts young people’s capacity to prosper in later life, thanks to the charity’s full school curriculum of core financial skills training.
Richard Ross, chair of Rosetrees, said: “Ensuring children from deprived homes start the day with a proper meal is good for their health and gives them the best chance of learning at school. We are also supporting research that is looking at the mental health problems of young people, which [is] growing for a variety of reasons.” Financial stress, often compounded by gaps in foundational financial understanding, is a proven contributor to mental health problems.
Ross, whose charity is a leading backer of “venture philanthropy” in the area of medical research, is convinced of the related relevance of the FT’s appeal and is a passionate advocate for a broader push to increase philanthropy. “People who are well provided [for] financially should contribute to the needs of others,” he said.
Ross’s family fortune stems from his parents’ multiple business start-ups, which range from a market stall to a property investment empire. That wealth once topped £100mn, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, but Ross has since given away a large portion of it. Medical research grants of more than £50mn have generated follow-on funding of £1.2bn, Ross said.
The trust’s match-funding offer to FLIC and Magic Breakfast was conditional on the appeal first reaching its original baseline target of £100,000. Notable donors to the appeal included Morgan Stanley International, as well as hundreds of FT readers.
In two months of appeal coverage of the work of FLIC and Magic Breakfast, as well as other organisations operating in related fields, the FT has reported on the growing realisation across the world — from Finland to Indonesia — that both nutritious food and financial education in schools can make a vast difference to future lives.
