By Chris Wearmouth 
Feed:500 – a new expansion of the Project:500 initiative – kicked off on Monday afternoon with tens of families from the area surrounding Butts Park Arena receiving their food packages for Christmas week.
Forty youngsters and their families were nominated by local schools to participate in the Coventry Rugby Foundation project, which this week included everything they need for nutritious and healthy breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
The Foundation works closely with the local schools who nominate children who are either part of social care or free school meal programmes.
This will be followed in the week after Christmas by a multi-sport camp at Butts Park Arena, with a further food package and cleaning materials to help keep their houses free of Covid-19.
Foundation Manager Hal Sparke was joined by Emma Sharp, wife of Executive Chairman, Jon, in handing out the food packages.
The food has been subsidised by the Morrisons Holyhead Road store in Coventry, with the cleaning materials provided by Mirius, another nationwide company based in the city.
Feed:500 has also been supported by a number of individuals and companies, including Countrywide Tax and Trust and Charter Savings Bank.
“With everything which is going on in the country at the moment we wanted to expand Project:500 with the addition of the Feed:500 drive for the Christmas holidays to help some of the city’s disadvantaged children and their families,” Sparke says.
“Hopefully the food packages will ease the burden being faced by these families, and I’d like to thank Morrisons Holyhead Road for supporting us. A massive thanks to Mirius for providing the cleaning products which we will be giving out next week, and to everyone else who has got behind Project:500 to make it possible.
“We hope that all of the youngsters have a great Christmas, and we’re looking forward to seeing them at Butts Park next week for the multi-sport camp.”
To find out more head to www.coventryrugby.co.uk/project500 or contact us at community@coventryrugby.co.uk
