CanTeam Play Stakeholder Report Published
CanTeam is an after school social dining initiative co-designed with young people that encourages students and their families to enjoy nutritious, delicious and diverse foods together.
Launched by Future Foundations in June 2023, CanTeam aims to embed a transformative food culture within schools, enabling young people to learn and thrive.
Over the first 6 months of the initiative CanTeam was funded and supported by the Big Change Big Education Challenge to develop the concept, consult beneficiaries and test the idea.
With this opportunity to engage and learn, we co-designed a national survey with Professor Jim Ritchie Durham and Play Verto. Our national survey asked young people, parents, carers and educators (Players) about their current after school food habits and their thoughts on the CanTeam concept and its potential benefits.
Completed by over 1,300 players, the evidence is clear that CanTeam is a concept with huge potential. Young people, parents, carers and educators think that we can improve access to a diverse range of foods, improve understanding around nutrition, and bring school communities closer together.
This report highlights some of the key insights and themes raised by the Players that we are pleased to share with you.
With 87% interested to see CanTeam launched at a school near them; we are excited to take the next steps on the journey to transforming after school food. We are delighted CanTeam has been announced a winner of the Big Education Challenge allowing us to use these insights to pilot at scale.
We surveyed 1,322 young people, parents, carers, and educators from across the country to understand the potential demand. We partnered with Play Verto, a first-of-its-kind gamified data collection platform connecting communities to decision-makers through play-based experiences to gather actionable insights which included:
- 86% of parents/carers felt CanTeam could reduce the pressure to provide a meal around work and after-school clubs.
- 87% of respondents said they’re curious and keen to have a CanTeam launch at a school near them.
Our Verto players have supported our aspirations to deliver a food culture revolution through schools. Students, parents/carers and educators recognise that CanTeam can help improve access to nutritious, varied and affordable food; and showed a clear appetite for being introduced to new food from diverse food cultures.
The results from this national survey show the strong demand in bringing CanTeam to school communities across the UK. Since launching the Verto Future Foundations has had 30 schools from across the UK register on a waiting list to launch a CanTeam pilot. School Leaders recognise the opportunity of CanTeam to help foster more accessible, available, affordable, and appealing food for their students to boost health, wellbeing and academic performance.
Despite the busy lives and cost pressures affecting all families, the interest and demand for CanTeam shows that accessible social dining events after school hold strong appeal. Combined with the work we are doing with the Institute for Strategic Clarity to capture the total value of CanTeam across all parts of the community, we will continue to measure how CanTeam can positively impact many parts of a whole school community.
Future Foundations mission is to equip all young people to thrive. Healthy and nutritious food is fundamental to the health, wellbeing and educational outcomes of young people.
CanTeam’s vision is a society where every young person and their family can access available, affordable and appealing food; enabling them to learn and thrive. Through the regular provision of healthy nutritious food at social dining events after school, we are on a mission to establish more CanTeam hubs than McDonalds restaurants across the UK by 2030.
The positive results of the pilots and survey were used to inform our plans for 2024-25 which were submitted to Big Change.
Following the successful pilots and this national survey Future Foundations has partnered with Ark to launch extended pilots of CanTeam which launched in January 2024, and will run for 7 weeks, with weekly events co-designed with young people and the schools. We look forward to sharing the results of these pilots.
We are delighted to share that CanTeam is a winner of the Big Education Challenge and with the support of Big Change we will be evaluating the wider benefits of CanTeam as we test extended pilots at schools in 2024-25.
We are excited to continue developing CanTeam and the impact we can have on the health and wellbeing of young people and their families throughout the UK.
BIG NEWS – CanTeam, has been awarded £225,000
Future Foundations, the organisation behind CanTeam, has been awarded £225,000 to develop and pilot at scale the idea. The £1m prize fund is the first of its kind run by education charity Big Change and was set up to identify, support and reward bold ideas with the potential to transform education and learning in the UK. Click here to find out more.
Find out more:
- Find out more about Play Verto, our impact partner here
- Read about the Challenge here
- Read about CanTeam, our BIG idea for change here
Get in touch, if you think you can help…
- Email: jon@future-foundations.co.uk
We are looking for schools and partners who share our vision and can help us pilot CanTeam at scale.