Improved classroom concentration, better social skills and the remarkable discovery of the boiled egg: these have been some of the unexpected benefits for children attending AEGON’s Breakfast Clubs in the United Kingdom.
The Breakfast Clubs were developed by AEGON’s office in Edinburgh with a simple goal in mind: providing children in disadvantaged areas of the city a healthy breakfast before school begins. But the results have extended beyond the limits of nutritional guidelines.
“Children who were always late are now punctual, and their social skills have advanced,” said Neil Smith, Community Sponsorship & Development Coordinator at AEGON UK. “These are kids from families with real challenges – unemployment, alcoholism, drugs – and they’re setting their napkins in their laps and asking, ‘Can you pass me the milk, please? We’re also seeing a positive impact on their schoolwork. With a decent breakfast inside them, they find it easier to concentrate in the classroom.”
For the children at Clovenstone Primary School in Edinburgh, one of the program’s surprise educational discoveries was: boiled eggs.
“They’d never seen an egg before,” said Helen Syme, AEGON’s Corporate Responsibility Manager in Edinburgh. “They didn’t know what to do with them, how to cut them or peel them or eat them.”
The Breakfast Club program operates on a shoestring: the annual budget for each school that signs up is just GBP 5,000. AEGON works to find local businesses and organizations that will sponsor the program and cover these basic operating expenses, acting, said Mr. Smith, as “a kind of dating agency”. It’s proof that often time and energy count for as much as financial support.