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Meals Behind the Wire

Meals Behind the Wire

Meals for Prison Officers and Prison Health Care Workers

‘Meals Behind the Wire’ is a scheme launched to support our #hiddenheroes by ESC’s Teacher Training Lecturer Jose Aguiar along with Jo Lear, an independent educational mentor. The pair set up this worthy charitable programme to support the well-being of key workers in prisons during the current pandemic.

Thanks to Jose and Jo’s initiative to help those on the frontline of our prisons, ‘Meals Behind the Wire’ are now providing delicious meals and fruit boxes to prison officers and prison health workers in and around London. After applying for a small charitable fund which was granted, the two educators are now able to supply this food for eight weeks - that’s a lot of food!

Describing how the scheme works, Jose stated “HMP Pentonville, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, HMP/YOI Feltham and HMP/YOI Isis will each receive around 150 meals from COOK and a box of fruit from Premier Fruits to thank them for their continued work during these difficult times.” 

As we all know from recent news, the coronavirus has impacted the country’s key workers on an unprecedented scale. Jose observed that our prison officers and prison health care workers are working under extremely challenging conditions just like our NHS and wanted to support them.

Working within healthcare and within detention comes with its dangers and risks. Jose and Jo saw a gap in the support for frontline and key workers and decided to act on this in a fantastic way. Jose commented that “we believe that food is more than nutrition, it is bonding, and demonstrates love and appreciation. We wanted our prison officers and prison health workers to feel our appreciation in this very challenging time.”

Alongside this, Jose is also currently running our Award in Education and Training course, which is online due to coronavirus. The course is fantastic for those looking to learn teaching and training skills and a brilliant way to enhance existing evaluation and presentation methods.

‘Meals Behind the Wire’ would like to give thanks to:

• The Kindness Fund from Cook Food who are funding 60 meals a week at HMP Pentonville https://www.cookfood.net/info/kindness-fund/

• COOK - Chiswick who have donated 400 meals. https://www.cookfood.net/shops/Chiswick

• Members of the public who have made donations of Cook meals, cakes, and cookies.

• Special thanks go to the charitable fund whose support enabled the scheme to take place