Blog. Help us help more hospitality families with school uniform costs

When we were planning our new look for Hospitality Action, and coming up with our new ‘we’ve got you’ motto, one of the questions we kept asking ourselves was – how can we make it easier to get our help, and what can we practically do to really make a difference to people’s lives?

And that’s where the idea for a school uniform grant first came up. Many of the team here, myself included - are parents. We know what a key milestone the first day back at school is for every family member. We also know the huge sense of responsibility a parent feels to make sure their kids look great on the first day of school, even though the trousers will have a hole in the knee and those pristine shoes will be scuffed by the end of the first week!

Any parent feels a huge sense of responsibility to make sure their children look their best for school with the correct uniform, clean P.E. kit and sensible shoes. The photo below is of my own daughter on her first day of primary school, she's looking very serious!

We also know it can be very difficult for people to approach a charity for financial assistance. By making a fund available for something simple and tangible like school uniform we hoped to make it easier for people, who we may not have spoken to before, to reach out to us for the first time.

It turns out our hunch was correct and over 80 applications have already been made and the full £10,000 allocated to the scheme has almost been spent.

This presents us with a challenge, which your business may be able to help with. We believe that we could easily spend an additional £10,000 but we don’t have the funds readily available to meet the demand, as it would mean taking money from other areas of our grant making – such as helping people in crisis or paying for essential needs such as accommodation.

Therefore, we’re asking industry suppliers to contribute towards extending the scheme. An additional £10,000 would mean we could fully kit out nearly 200 more hospitality children ready for the new school year.

Just as importantly you’d be playing a huge part in alleviating the stress and financial pressure for parents who are often already worrying about the additional costs of food and childcare during the summer holidays while trying to maintain their working hours.

If you’d like to contribute please contact us and we’ll be sure to shout your generosity from the rooftops.

We’ve got you