Winner
Free School Meals
by Bite Back 2030
Summary of work
Bite Back is a youth activist movement challenging a food system that’s been set up to fool us all. Why? Because we’re in the midst of a global epidemic of food-related ill health.
Research shows free school meals have a positive impact on children’s nutrition as well as wider benefits such as improving wellbeing and educational attendance. They provide a vital nutritional safety net, yet hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty don’t qualify for them, due to an extremely low income threshold.
So in June of 2022, Bite Back opened a petition on Change.org to demonstrate the public’s support for extending the free school meals to children living in poverty. We achieved 63,428 signatures within two weeks but that wasn’t enough to grab the government’s attention. So we created the Free School Meals social media campaign, with very limited resources and budget but a very strong cause. The campaign achieved excellent engagement and we’re proud to have garnered over 262,000 signatures, as well as vocal support from MPs, House of Lords, and other high profile decision makers.
Judges’ comments
Bite Back has produced a standout and simple execution that beheld impactful statistics and baselines, with well-defined, informing data that significantly increased public support in a cost-effective way. The judges also noted the strong situation analysis and objectives that were really clear, along with their strong media awareness, which generated good engagement across platforms.
