Once you start thinking about what the collective noun for bagels might be, it’s hard to stop. A brace of bagels? A circularity? The possibilities are endless. Because bagels matter of course. Take this example.
About 10 years ago, a primary school teacher announced to her class, ‘The bagels are coming!’ Naturally, the children whooped and cheered. They knew what a bonanza of bagels meant: not starting the school day on an empty stomach. What these children in a deprived area of south-west England didn’t know at the time was that they had been among an estimated half a million school children across the country starting their day at school too hungry to learn.
Nor did they know that they were now among a new number: one of 440 schools around the country collectively receiving a delivery of 17,000 breakfasts every day. A wheel of bagels certainly, but cereals and porridge were also on the menu. Every one of those children owed their daily breakfast at school to Carmel McConnell, a woman who wasn’t a teacher or part of the educational system at all.
In fact, Carmel once had different ideas altogether about how she would change the world. Though trained and set for a career in broadband technology, she resolved to be a campaigner, to stand up against racism or, as was the case in her support for anti-nuclear protests, to sit down at Greenham Common. For a time, Carmel looked for a mechanism to combine tech knowledge and skills with her principles. Her solution was to set up her own ethical tech-centred business helping leaders, as she later put it, ’to use social activism as a way to create more trust, more purpose, more passion in their businesses.’
And what would be a better way for Carmel to achieve her objectives and boost business prospects than to write a book, one that would make the case for taking ideas in social activism and applying them for ethical change in the corporate sector.
As part of her research, Carmel interviewed five headteachers in East London. That meeting changed everything, not least the way she thought about bagels. For they told her that more than half of their teachers were bringing in food for the children every single day. Out of compassion because so many were coming to school hungry, yes, but also because they wanted to teach. Empty stomachs invariably led to no-shows, late arrivals, bad behaviour, poor concentration and trouble in the playground.
Carmel couldn’t let it go. Knowing from these conversations and further research that as many as half a million children across the country were turning up for school each day not having eaten, prompted her to act. For a year after making her shocking discovery Carmel completed her book and continued with her business, but at the same time built a routine of regular food drops at five schools. Teachers talk. Soon word spread about this fabulous bagel-buying woman, and 25 other schools asked for help. Meanwhile, Carmel’s book was selling like bagels in her local supermarket. A choice had to be made.
Carmel elected to re-mortgage her house, donate the proceeds of the book to the charity she would set up and move on from her business, but not abandon her entrepreneurial, social activism, campaigning and tech skills. These would be vital for her charity to survive. Carmel thought she had the name for her philanthropic enterprise until one of the children said to her, ‘Miss, when I have a bagel and my milk, my brain wakes up. It’s like magic.’ That was it. The charity would be called Magic Breakfast.
It took Carmel years of repeating the message at every meeting, every opportunity, on every available communication channel, for it to get through: first, it wasn’t the fault of the children that they were hungry; and secondly, the simple fact was that many low-income parents and families were working long hours but were still unable to put enough food on the table. Blaming them for not feeding their children was not the answer.
In recent years, Magic Breakfast has proved to be a critical catalyst, prompting, government, business, the educational sector, celebrities and famous footballers alike, to recognise that food insecurity and food poverty for children and young people are having a serious impact on their education and development. Today, Magic Breakfast is delivering daily breakfast for more than 200,000 children and young people in England and Scotland. And yet, in its annual survey of partner schools, Carmel and the Magic Breakfast team have found that no less than 81 per cent of their partner schools believe that child hunger has increased in their school community in the past year.
But Carmel is still going, and more bagels are coming. A bounty? A philanthropy of bagels?