TORONTO – The largest educational foodservice provider in the country, Chartwells Canada , and WE, a family of organizations that makes doing good doable, announced the celebration of achieving its three-year pledge of enabling one million meals to help tackle food insecurity in less than one year. Available at more than 600 Chartwells’ elementary, secondary and post-secondary locations across Canada, the Chartwells WE Special is more than a meal, with a portion of the proceeds from every special purchased supporting the Food pillar of WE’s holistic sustainable development model, WE Villages. By purchasing the special, students contributed to the pledge to enable 1.4 million meals in WE Charity’s partner communities globally.
“I congratulate the more than 1.2 million students and community members in our partner schools for achieving this milestone with us,” said Ashton Sequeira, President, Chartwells Canada. “Last September, when we launched our Thinking Ahead Giving Back vision and our partnership with WE to introduce the WE Special Meals, we knew that our commitment to enable 1 million meals to tackle food insecurity was ambitious. Our team is deeply touched and inspired at the way the students have embraced the opportunity to make socially conscious meal choices and because of their dedication to give back, we have not only achieved this goal, but exceeded it in less than one year!”
“Coast to coast tens of thousands of young change-makers from kindergarten to post-secondary have chosen to do good through their everyday meal choices to help break the cycle of poverty in marginalized communities where the need for food security is crucial,” said Craig Kielburger, co-founder of WE Charity. “By supporting communities overseas in building food security, the health of community members flourishes with access to nutrient-rich foods, including students, who develop energy and focus to be successful learners in the classroom. In turn, farmers earn a sustainable source of income and can send their children to school, which creates opportunity for their future.”
On September 18th, 2018, Chartwells Canada and WE announced their partnership to provide a sustainable give back opportunity to their over 600 K-12, private and higher education communities coast-to-coast, in response to student feedback for sustainable give back opportunities focused on food insecurity. The partnership has enabled meals to WE Villages and brought ME to WE products and WE Well-being workshops to schools across Canada.
WE Villages is built on five pillars of impact – Food, Education, Water, Health and Opportunity – with the Food pillar focusing on innovative farming techniques helping to ensure communities have access to healthy, self-sustaining food sources. Students can see how they are making a difference thanks to a one-of-a-kind number provided with every Chartwells WE Special, which includes ME to WE’s Track Your Impact promise, a simple code that gives students the opportunity to connect the dots from the meal they purchased directly to the community they are supporting.
The WE partnership is a key element of Chartwells’ Thinking Ahead Giving Back initiative which will continue engaging students on a higher level and working with them to tackle some of the key social concerns they face every day.
Through Thinking Ahead Giving Back, Chartwells has pledged to:
- Enable 1,000,000 meals globally to tackle food insecurity,
- Provide 10,000 hours of community support around mental health and social challenges facing our students, and
- Create 1,000 job connections for student employment opportunities
What’s next for the Chartwells and WE Partnership? In the 2019-20 academic year, Chartwells and WE will continue to offer the WE Special meals, and ME to WE products, further enabling meals in WE Charity’s partner communities in Kenya. In addition, Chartwells will continue to host WE Well-being workshops free to students at targeted post-secondary locations across Canada in addition to virtual well-being workshops offered coast-to-coast.
Chartwells operates in over 600 partner schools, employs more than 6,000 associates and serves over 50 million meals every year. For more information on Chartwells, please visit www.Compass-Canada.com.
About Chartwells Canada – Compass Group Canada
Chartwells Canada is a sector of Compass Group Canada, the country’s leading foodservice and support services provider with over 25,000 associates working throughout the country. The company specializes in providing foodservices and support services across the core sectors including leading sports and leisure venues, executive dining rooms and cafes, schools, universities, seniors’ residences and hospitals as well as remote camps and off shore oil rigs. Compass Group Canada has been identified as Best Workplaces™ in Retail and Hospitality in 2019 by Great Place to Work®, the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures.
Our parent company, UK-based Compass Group PLC, operates in more than 50 countries, with leading market positions in the UK, Continental Europe, Australia, and the US, combined with business in developing markets in Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. Compass Group employs more than 600,000 associates worldwide delivering superior service for the highest customer experience.
About WE
WE Day is part of WE—a family of organizations that makes doing good, doable. WE is made up of WE Charity, empowering domestic and international change, ME to WE, a social enterprise that creates socially conscious products and experiences to help support the charity, and WE Day, filling stadiums around the world with the greatest celebration of social good.
WE Charity was founded by New York Times Bestselling authors Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger, in 1995, with a mission to fight child labor. WE has since grown and evolved to address the root cause of child labor – extreme poverty. In the past 24 years, WE‘s programs have empowered over 1 million people with clean water, built 1,500 schools and schoolrooms overseas, and empowered more than 200,000 children with access to education.
WE enables youth and families to better the world—supporting 7,200+ local and global causes by volunteering millions of hours of service, shopping daily with an impact, and raising millions of dollars that directly benefit their local communities and the world.
WE’s headquarters is based in downtown Toronto at the WE Global Learning Center, a service and social innovation accelerator for young people, leading them to become the next generation of leaders and towards a brighter future.
Join the movement today at WE.org.
