Sheffield food poverty expert's fact-finding mission to America

Lindsay Graham, a freelance child food poverty policy advisor, has long campaigned for children to receive free school meals during the summer holidays as well as in term time amid concerns many children are going hungry at home.

She visited nine states in the USA to research the department of agriculture’s state funded ‘Summer Meals’ programme, which provides pupils with food even when school is not in session, in order to see how this model could potentially be adapted in the UK.

Her input helped to form the ‘Building Better Communities through Global Learning’ report, a joint initiative by The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and The Rank Foundation. The scheme tasked 58 trust fellows, including Lindsay, to travel the world and explore examples of good practice that might work in the UK to help build stronger communities.

The 156-page report was launched at the House of Commons on June 9 and its authors are hoping MPs will feed their findings into policy making. Lindsay, who is also working on securing a commission into child hunger, was a guest speaker.

Julia Weston, chief executive of The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, said: “We wanted to enable global learning that could contribute to safe, strong and empowered communities.”

David Sanderson, chief executive of The Rank Foundation, added: “The challenges facing our communities today are myriad, complex and constantly in the headlines. The solutions we all seek cannot lie with an individual, or even solely with government or charitable organisations; they require collaboration and a collective approach. We hope that this body of work, undertaken by people working across all sectors and at all levels, will contribute to the debate and help provide some solutions.”