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Hastings cafe extends school holiday food support with £30k donations
Barry Ashley's The Grumpy Cook in Hastings raised £30,000 from global donors. He plans to expand to weekends and other East Sussex areas after government fund changes.
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A cafe in Hastings that started feeding children during the summer holidays is planning to expand the programme to weekends and other parts of East Sussex, after raising £30,000 from donors around the world.
Barry Ashley, who owns The Grumpy Cook, began offering free meals to schoolchildren over the summer break, funded by donations. The scheme drew support from as far as New York and Australia, he said. A GoFundMe page brought in £10,000, with another £20,000 donated through his own website.
"If people genuinely want to help then lets do it and get the word out," Ashley said. "If I can get more places doing it then it will help even more people around East Sussex."
The expansion comes after the government replaced its Household Support Fund with a new Crisis and Resilience Fund at the end of March. East Sussex County Council stopped providing summer holiday supermarket vouchers for families eligible for free school meals under the old scheme. Eligible families no longer automatically receive food vouchers over the holidays, the council said.