The City Council maintains until the end of June ‘Menjadors a casa’ program

Benidorm City Council will maintain until the end of June the municipal program 'Menjadors a casa', through which the city's school population is served weekly with dining for grants of types B to F, about 1,000 minors . This has announced today by the mayor, Toni Pérez, in a telematic press conference in which he reported that since April 7, the date of the launch of this free program, a total of 39,076 menus have been delivered. At the end of the program, 72,412 will have been reached.

Toni Pérez explained that City Council started this program "with the aim of serving all students in Benidorm with dining for grants that had been left out of the 'purchase vouchers' plan designed by the Regional Goverment, while the suspension of the face-to-face academic activity due to the Covid-19 health crisis ”. In this way, balanced weekly menu batches have been delivered consisting of first and second courses, dairy, fruit and water, and in various deliveries products donated by companies that have wanted to collaborate with this program and also with the line of aid provided by Caritas.

Menus, the mayor explained, "of the 5th range, whose preparation, by a local company, has a very careful production process, with first quality raw materials and very strict sanitary and dietary controls."

In its first installment, the program served more than 500 Infant and Primary schoolchildren with type B, C and D grants. From the second installment, 'Menjadors a casa' was also extended to the beneficiaries of grants type E and F until reaching nearly 1,000 schoolchildren. The mayor recalled that "the beneficiaries of type A who had incidents with the‘ purchase vouchers ’of the Regional Goverment have also been attended to."

The mayor has specified that “the grants of the Regional Goverment and the dining room service, if it had been provided, would reach this course until mid-June, excluding holidays, weekends and Easter holidays, for example. However, taking into account the extraordinary situation generated by this health crisis, which is also social and economic, we have decided to maintain the program until the end of June ”.

The maintenance of 'Menjadors a casa' is “a decision to support families in difficult times and that we adopt from full conviction and, in addition, we do so after listening to families and caring about their needs and also the degree of service satisfaction ”. In this sense, he has detailed that through a brief questionnaire delivered last week tO beneficiaries of the program and answered by "more than 400 families", it has been found that "95% of them are favorable to the continuity" of 'Menjadors a casa'.

Furthermore, “80% of users who answered the questionnaire rated the public satisfaction with the program as 10; and 97.2% have highlighted that menus they have received week by week are nutritionally balanced ”, a perception that is confirmed in the nutritional sheets of each of the dishes chosen and prepared by the company with which it has been working.

The questionnaires answered by the families also indicate that "93.3% rate the attention provided by the volunteers as 'very good' and practically 100% consider the collection points enabled by Benidorm City Council to be correct."

The mayor once again thanked companies that have contributed to this initiative for their collaboration, "thus showing signs of solidarity and commitment to the city", as well as "the municipal staff and volunteers of the Collective Aid Network who throughout these nine weeks they have been caring for families and will continue to do so until the end of the school year. ”