Solutions SK and Stockport County Community Foundation launch school menu competition

Junior MasterChef watch out, Stockport County Community Foundation (SCCF) and Solutions SK (SSK) have joined forces to launch an exciting competition with schools around the borough as part of a programme to engage primary school children in the themes surrounding ‘healthy mind – healthy body’.

Children from all schools who receive school meals by Solutions SK are invited to design a new lunch menu and as part of their entry, they need to explain why they have made the choices on their entry.

To explain the concept and encourage children to take part, representatives from SCCF and Solutions SK are going into some schools to deliver assembly presentations.
Jacqueline Cohen, Customer Relations Engagement Manager at Solutions SK explains,

We design our menus to ensure children receive healthy food and vitamins to increase their concentration and energy levels throughout the day.  Combining this with essential exercise, will lead to healthy children in our schools – who are able to increase their performance in the classroom.  This year, figures from Public Health England confirm around one in ten children in Reception are obese, this doubles when children reach year 6 resulting to one in five.  We want to run programmes such as this to encourage children to really think about their daily food intake and exercise activity.

Sharon Alldread, Head of School Meals and Facilities Management at Solutions SK also comments,

“We work very closely with our schools, looking at the menus and how we can keep them interesting for the children as well as making them healthy.  We get some fantastic feedback from parents that children are eating better at home because they like the food at school.  This competition is designed to build on this approach.  We now want to expand on the children’s knowledge of nutrition and well being and why it is important.

Matthew Bailey from Stockport County Community Foundation comments,

We work with many primary school across Stockport and believe promoting healthy foods is an important message to get through to young people.  By partnering with Solutions SK we will help educate young people about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Programmes such as this will help empower the children and show them that eating well and exercising regularly can be fun.

The competition is now open and will run until Friday 27 May.  The winner will then be chosen by a group of representatives from Solutions SK and Stockport County Community Foundation.  A winning entry will be picked from key Stage 1 and 2, and the winners will be notified by a surprise visit to their school in June.    The winners (one from key stage 1 and 2) will have their lunch served for their whole school, and will be invited to eat their designer lunch with a member of Stockport County Football Team.  The winners will also receive a free training session for their school year, delivered by the Stockport County Community Foundation, as well as a family ticket for any Stockport County game of their choice and an invitation onto the pitch to open up the new season in September.

If your school would like our team to provide an assembly presentation to promote this competition, or if you would like an entry form sending to you, please contact Jacqueline Cohen at Solutions SK on jacqueline.cohen@solutionssk.co.uk or call 07800 618 021.