Interview with Jade Harris, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Delivery
Mayor’s Fund for London is a charity that champions opportunities for young Londoners facing the biggest barriers.
- How are you helping to tackle child poverty in London?
The Mayor’s Fund for London tackles child poverty through a joined-up approach: providing food as a foundation, skills as a springboard, and power through our platform. We support young Londoners facing inequality by providing front-line support and long-term opportunity. Kitchen Social is our flagship food and community programme and the largest citywide provider of holiday food and activities. Through it, we ensure families have access to nutritious meals and opportunities to thrive during the school holidays. Alongside this, our employability programme Access Aspiration connects young people to employers and professional leaders. Giving underrepresented young Londoners careers insight they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, helping to remove the hidden barriers to employment and open pathways to good jobs.
- Tell us something you are excited about?
We’re excited about our ever-growing youth engagement work, creating more space for young Londoners to influence the decisions that affect their lives. By connecting young people and power in London, we help shift that power to young Londoners, so they have a bigger say in the city’s future. Through youth-led initiatives like our recent Young Londoners Summit and upcoming Westminster roundtable, we’re ensuring young people can both access opportunities and shape the systems around them. This work is expanding alongside our programmes, which continue to evolve to deliver impact for young people day to day and influence policy and strategy. Kitchen Social is delivering support during every school holiday, providing meals and access to positive opportunities from sports sessions and cooking classes to driving lessons and mental health workshops. Meanwhile, Access Aspiration is deepening its partnerships with employers across key growth sectors, giving more young people from underrepresented backgrounds direct access to real-world careers insight, work experience, and building key skills.
- Share with our members something positive about your organisation’s achievement or service?
In 2024, we supported over 89,000 young Londoners across all 32 boroughs. Through our Food and Communities programmes, we delivered more than 400,000 meals and 23,000 opportunities. At the same time, our Employability and Skills work provided over 16,000 skills development activities. Our model supports the whole journey: from healthy meals to hands-on career development, we help young people feel supported, skilled, and seen.
And we’re proud that the young people we work with report this back to us. Samiya, a member of our Youth Board, reflected on our work, saying: “Through the Mayor’s Fund for London’s initiatives, we begin to shape a world where diversity is celebrated, and individuals feel valued and safe in their communities. MFL fosters dialogue, promotes education, and empowers marginalised voices. These efforts work to address systemic inequalities and create a more compassionate society for future generations.”
- What can other network members learn from you or find out more about through you?
We’d love to share learning on how to design integrated models that meet urgent needs and unlock long-term systems change. With Kitchen Social and Access Aspiration, we’ve created programmes that deliver practical support, whilst influencing local systems, employer practice, and policy conversations. We also bring strong experience in cross-sector convening and youth-led co-design. We are always keen to collaborate with others exploring these approaches.
- What would most help you achieve your goals?
We’re focused on sustainable growth, ensuring we can meet growing need while continuing to influence the bigger picture. What would help most is multi-year investment and joined-up policy that enables us to deepen our impact, led by young Londoners. This kind of support will underpin our vision and mission for long-term, positive change. We want every young Londoner to be prepared for the future, not just with food and education, but with the confidence, networks, and skills to thrive in good careers.
- Why did you join 4in10? What do you enjoy about being part of the 4in10 network?
We joined 4in10 to be part of a collective, working to challenge the root causes of poverty in London. The network provides vital opportunities to share learning, amplify advocacy, and stand together for long-term change. It also enables us to work together with partners on big events such as the upcoming Child Poverty Summit with 4in10 and The Childhood Trust. Last year, we linked up with the Food Foundation on an episode of our youth-led podcast The Intersect, discussing food poverty and the power of youth voice in influencing policymakers.
