Press release -
Dine Out and Help the Homeless
If over the coming weeks you donate £1 to charity while dining out then you’ve made a valuable contribution to stemming the tide of homelessness via the StreetSmart campaign. This annual restaurant campaign raises funds by adding a voluntary £1 per table to diner’s bills during November and December.
Restaurants like Arbutus, Coq d’Argent, Ottolenghi and River Café, participate every year and have helped raise £6.9 million since the campaign’s inception. “We’ve been doing this since the beginning” says Ruth Rodgers of The River Café “The charity has just kept growing and has become a bit of a family tree amongst restaurateurs.” This year new branches to the StreetSmart tree include City Social, Gymkhana and Rotorino.
StreetSmart is supported by Deutsche Bank as part of its Born to Be youth engagement programme. The Bank is a long term supporter of StreetSmart, having funded all of the campaign costs for the past eight years, ensuring that every single penny donated goes to helping the homeless and vulnerable. Deutsche Bank also drove the charity to launch SleepSmart in 2010 to include top hotels and their guests in a similar way with £1 added to each guest’s stay over the same two-month period. Those participating this year include Park Plaza Hotels, Jumeirah Hotels and The Hyatt Regency Churchill.
“Long may this campaign be the catalyst that enables us to help the local community in this way.” Michael Gray, GM, Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill
A staggering 80,000 young people each year experience homelessness. They often end up in hostels, squats or sleeping rough as a result of family breakdown and it becomes a huge challenge for them to access education and employment opportunities. This year, StreetSmart funds will be used to support family mediation projects and projects giving the extra help required to train and employ those young people who have slipped through the system. StreetSmart believe, along with their partners, that they can raise enough funds this winter to prevent hundreds of young people entering the long-term trap of homelessness.
“StreetSmart is low in bureaucracy and high on delivering where help is needed. We may not be able to solve the question of homelessness but at least by doing something we, in some way, diminish its tyranny.” Stephen Fry
Topics
- Teaching, Learning
Categories
- chef
- restaurant
- charity
· The 21 cities/regions taking part this year are: Bath, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hampshire, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Oxford, Southend-on-Sea, Surrey and Wakefield.
· All funds raised in each city supports projects based in that city. So Manchester restaurants support Manchester charities.
· Since 1998 StreetSmart has raised over £6.9 million for the homeless (£4.5 million since Deutsche Bank began supporting in 2006).
· *80,000 young people aged between16-25 experience homelessness each year in the UK according to CentrePoint.
· **35% of homeless people are under 25 years old – Crisis report 2014
· The number of rough sleepers in London in 2013 was 6,508 people – a rise of 77% since 2010 according to Homeless Link, the umbrella body for homeless charities.
· A full list of the participating restaurants, hotels and the homeless projects funded and partners supporting StreetSmart can be found at streetsmart.org.uk.
· Trustees of StreetSmart are William Sieghart (Chairman of StreetSmart, Founder of Forward Publishing), May-Lou Sturridge (Former director of The Groucho Club, Hotelier), Rosie Boycott (Editor, Writer, Journalist, Chair of London Food), Nick Emley, (Entrepreneur, Former Director of StreetSmart).
· For further information on StreetSmart, please contact Jennie Blouet on Tel 020 7292 5591 or email jennie.blouet@streetsmart.org.uk or follow us on twitter @TweetSmartTwo.
· Watch StreetSmart patron Richard Bacon and chefs Angela Hartnett, Marcus Wareing, Ashley Palmer Watts and Jeremy Lee discuss the campaign: streetsmart.org.uk.
