It has been another successful year for the Stop Hunger Foundation, raising over £450,000 to tackle hunger and malnutrition in the UK and Ireland.

As Chair of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation I am delighted that we have had another successful year, raising over £450,000 over the year to support the most disadvantaged individuals and communities in the UK and Ireland.

The purpose of our Foundation is clear – to alleviate hunger and to provide education and support beyond food aid to promote health, nutrition and wellbeing. To do this we have continued to build our fantastic relationships with Fareshare, SSAFA and Coram while investing in new relationships with the Trussell Trust and Ashoka. The Trussell Trust runs a 400-strong network of foodbanks that provides three-day food parcels and support to people experiencing crisis in the UK. In the last 12 months, they received £100,000 from the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, allowing us to impact almost 5,000 people by providing 43,124 meals through the three-day emergency food parcels.

Ashoka is the largest global network of social entrepreneurs. Last year, they partnered with Sodexo on an event to explore innovative ways of tackling hunger and malnutrition with social entrepreneurs who presented their projects. This has led to a new partnership with Incredible Edible whose projects use food to help communities connect.

The Annual Foundation Dinner and the Supplier Golf Day continue to be important fundraising events for the Foundation, together with the countless events embarked on by our enthusiastic staff and charity champions – not least, the Dunwich Dynamo cycle ride. We introduced a focus on engagement this year, most evident through the significant level of employee volunteering as part of the “Volunteering Pledge” initiative. I’d like to thank all those who participated, the feedback has been extremely positive and we aim to build on the programme each year.

Your efforts has enabled us to support a wide range of charity partners - a selection of case studies in our recently published 2017 Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation Annual Report highlights the difference you are making.

The Foundation is always looking for fun and inventive ways of encouraging employee support. We have just launched a new weekly staff lottery called “Your Lucky Number” – this gives our staff the chance of a cash prize, but the certainty that they are raising funds in support of the Foundation’s work.

I would like to thank all those who have supported the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation over the past year, whether through fundraising or volunteering. This year we hope to build on the work we have done and we need your help to do that.