Peterborough’s Nando’s joins new food donation and employment programme

Nando’s already works closely with several external partners including the charity Family Action and their HeadStart programme, supporting young people into employment, to date this figure stands at more than 200 jobs created.

With job opportunities on hold, Nando’s wanted to continue their work with these partners but shift focus to include food donations. Restaurants taking part will be serving up free meals once a week to vulnerable young people and their families.

The programme aims to help with both the immediate need for free meals, and most importantly a long-term impact on the lives of disadvantaged young people, through supporting their futures with employment opportunities.

With the number of free meals served doubling week on week since the scheme began in June, and with more Nando’s locations participating in the coming weeks, Nando’s is aiming to donate over 15,000 free meals to disadvantaged young people across the UK by the end of the trial period. Fuel Your Future won’t stop there though, Nando’s has an aspiration of building the programme out nationally over time to ultimately donate half a million meals a year.

Over the last three years, Nando’s has worked closely with several external partners including the charity Family Action and their HeadStart programme, supporting more than 200 young people into employment. In addition, in 2020 alone, aside to job placements, these partnerships have had a positive impact on 1,291 young people’s lives through employability workshops, training, support and career discovery days. Over the last 3 years young people from HeadStart in partnership with Nando’s have also volunteered nearly 40k hours in local communities as part of the scheme.

Looking forward, Nando’s have ambitions to create in the region of 500 new job placements across the business through Family Action’s, HeadStart programme, and Nando’s other partnerships with Springboard, Remit, The Forward Trust and The Shaw Trust. These opportunities will pick back up in due course when the job landscape is a little clearer regarding COVID-19 and Nando’s hope to be able to increase the number of job placements year on year.

In the short term, there will be a stronger focus not just job outcomes but also work experience opportunities and mentoring for young people across the Nando’s business.