NHS staff with meals provided by ‘One Million Meals’
A former LSESU sabbatical officer has launched the 'One Million Meals' campaign, aiming to donate a million free meals to key workers in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bilal Bin Saqib, who graduated in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at LSE, co-founded the One Million Meals campaign with a group of social entrepreneurs. The campaign provides key workers like NHS staff, police, school staff, and firefighters with free meals during the COVID-19 crisis, by raising funds and working with food platforms, food chains and restaurants.
Volunteers at One Million Meals identify demand from essential workplaces and then arrange deliveries from participating restaurants, with each meal costing less than £5 to provide. In a single week, One Million Meals coordinated more than 5,000 meals to key workers across the UK.
The initiative is helping isolated community hospitals like Savernake Hospital in Wiltshire, where staff were unable to access meals after the hospital canteen and local pub closed down.
Bilal Bin Saqib said, “So far, One Million Meals has been relying on our team’s resources and the amazing generosity of our sponsors to provide meals to key workers and frontline staff.
"We have now had over 40 hospitals express interest in our services. However, to meet our increasing demand, we are reaching out to the public to donate to the campaign to help us bring food to the people keeping them safe and healthy.”
By 16 April 2020, 'One Million Meals' raised almost £23,000 of its initial £50,000 target. Public and businesses are encouraged to donate via the GoFundMe fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/s8egdn-one-million-meals