Breakfast Club/Supporting Healthy Eating
A breakfast club is an excellent way of serving a whole school community. One example of this working well began in a secondary school which already enjoyed a positive relationship local youth-workers and chaplains. As part of regular meetings with senior management they were discussing the needs of pupils. One issue they felt they could commit to helping with was the number of young people coming to school early. They usually came without breakfast and by the time classes started were bored, hungry and unsettled.
So, they looked at the abilities and experience they had and offered an early morning sports and healthy eating club. The sports hall was opened for them, pupils came and played basketball then they sat down and ate a healthy breakfast of fruit, yoghurt and snack bars (funded out of the school's budget) before they went to their first class. This was a time of many interesting conversations!
School staff spoke of how some pupils were more settled as the day began, a clear benefit to the school, and the chaplains and youth workers benefitted by developing stronger relationships with the pupils and staff.
How could you start this yourself?
Discuss with the school your commitment to serving and working in partnership. This includes how open you should be about your Christian values. Good quality youth work often leads to questions, from staff and young people that you can respond to.
Look at the talents and abilities of your church or volunteers and see how they match with what young people would enjoy. It doesn't need to be sport - it could be music, arts and crafts, bike maintenance or just the ability to sit and chat!
Commit to a trial period of a month then get feedback from the young people, school staff and volunteers.
Agree on funding. This could be provided by the church.
