Due to a lottery system run by School Meals, Dept of Social Protection, our school was denied the provision of hot school meals. All other local schools in Killinarden had been awarded hot school meals. We felt that this was extremely unfair that the junior children in our school would have a cold lunch, while the children in the adjoining senior school(many brothers, sisters and cousins of our children here) would be provided with a hot lunch.
We decided to work together as a school and begin a campaign to try and get awarded hot school lunches too, just like many of our brothers, sisters, cousins and friends.
We looked to get 500 people to sign our petition.
We made postcards and sent them to Minister for Social protection Heather Humphreys, asking her to right the wrong we felt that was made.
We made some newspaper appearances on the Tallaght Echo and The Irish Times, sharing our story.
Our principal Ms.Byrne spoke out for our school on the airwaves on Newstalk- Lunchtime live programme to explain our frustrations and to try and make a change.
All of everyone’s above efforts and actions resulted in the decision being turned, and our wonderful Junior school being given the green light for all of our amazing children here to be provided with hot lunch school meals.
We are overjoyed with the success of the campaign and the result, and we thank everyone that got behind our school.
Take a look below to see some of our hard work during the campaign.
click on the link to read our article in The Irish Times;
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/calls-for-hot-school-meal-scheme-to-be-expanded-1.4566787
