On Tuesday, Princess Marie visited Gildbroskolen in Ishoj with the Danish Food Bank. Gildbroskolen has a breakfast club where students can eat breakfast before the start of classes. There are 24 breakfast clubs in total which receive food from the Food Bank.
Princess Marie visited the Food Bank earlier this year, and she asked to be able to join the Food Bank on a food delivery to one of the clubs when possible. The Food Bank delivers food that is either too close to the expiry date or has damage to the packaging and therefore can not be sold in stores. Giving them to the Food Bank helps reduce food waste which is something Princess Marie is very passionate about.
Every morning when the Food Bank arrives, one of the women working in the kitchen will tell the volunteers what they need for the morning in order to make sure that they don’t have too much as they want to avoid food waste as much as possible. Princess Marie helped select the items that were asked on Tuesday morning before assisting the staff in serving breakfast.
Usually, 30 to 50 students eat breakfast at school, but there were more on Tuesday as they wanted to see Princess Marie. There are several reasons as to why students eat breakfast at school. Some like it because it’s cosier or the food is better than what they would have had at home. Others come to the club because their parents leave home very early for work, so it’s easier for the students to go to school earlier and have a good breakfast. There was a funny moment – as reported by sn.dk – when the headmaster said to the students waiting in the canteen: “If you want to get up and have some food, you can go but do it quietly”. Quietly had to be repeated several times as the students were very excited and cheered when they saw the Princess.
Princess Marie ate breakfast with the students and was able to talk to them and ask about the breakfast club concept. The students told her it was excellent except they had to wake up early as they have to eat breakfast before the start of classes. Before leaving, Princess Marie praised the concept as “There are so many children in Denmark who do not eat breakfast”, and breakfast is a very important meal.
