School Breakfast Partnership

In response to a growing awareness that many students were going to school most days without eating breakfast, Hands Up Mallee consulted with schools, and from this developed, and created a collaborative school breakfast program model.

Demand on available resources has increased since work began. Growing from 8 pilot schools in 2012 serving an average of 1150 breakfasts per week to 23 Education Partners (Schools, Kindergartens and Education Centres) serving around 1900 breakfasts per week.

With growing social pressures and food insecurity in our local community this is likely to continue to increase.

an opportunity for every child in our region to have a nutritious start to the day

the partnership model

In our region we have adopted a coordinated and collaborative approach to breakfast programs. The Mildura Region School Breakfast Partnership is designed to strengthen and establish school breakfast programs in the Mildura region and alleviate the financial burden on school budgets. The partnership includes Hands Up Mallee, Foodbank Australia, participating schools and financial donors.
Schools jointly contribute to, and share from, a central pool of funds as well as support each other by sharing information, ideas and insights into getting the most out of the program.
This approach ensures all schools have the same opportunity to host a breakfast program, eliminates competition between schools for funds, provides practical locally relevant advice, and encourages whole of community support for the partnership.

extensive consultation with local schools revealed:

Many teachers believe a significant number of children are affected by the issue of hunger
Principals identified that children attending school without having eaten breakfast was a barrier to student health and wellbeing; as well as positive learning outcomes - which has wide ranging and potentially long-term ramifications
Several schools had identified regular student absenteeism was often linked with a family's inability to send food to school with their child
Several schools in the region had attempted school breakfast program in the past or were running small scale breakfast programs, but these programs were viewed by schools as unsustainable and were a drain on school's limited funds
Other schools identified a need for a breakfast program but didn't have the finances or capacity to establish a program

research shows there are many benefits of ensuring all children have breakfast available in their education settings

To learn more about how our unique partnership works click on the 2018-2019 evaluation report.

or the 2017-2018 evaluation and literature review

download the 2017-2018 report

read the literature review

Donations and Sponsors

Local schools struggle to keep breakfast programs funded. It is difficult to keep the costs of buying food low as the demand continues to increase. To make sure breakfast programs continue to survive and help local children thrive, we need to build long-term financial partnerships to support the school breakfast partnership.
We would love to hear from community members, businesses and agencies who want to support healthy children in our region.

100% of your donation will:

be directed to a dedicated account for the sole use of schools in the Northern Mallee region for the Breakfast Program Partnership
be used to pay for subsidised food for school breakfast programs
be tax deductable (donations about $2.00) Sunraysia Community Health Services will issue a donation receipt