Stelios Foundation donates £1 million worth of food to UK food banks
Howard Lake | 20 May 2025 | News
The Stelios Philanthropic Foundation has extended its ‘Food From the Heart’ programme in Greece and Cyprus to the UK with a donation of tinned chilli con carne worth more than £1 million at retail value to anti-poverty charity Trussell.
The Food From the Heart programme began in 2013 operating from 12 distribution points in Cyprus and Greece. It has given away more than 42 million snacks to people in need in the two countries.
The extension of the programme to the UK will enable Trussell to provide cans of chilli con carne to food banks across the UK.
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The announcement describes this donation as a “kickstart” to the partnership with Trussell, suggesting that further donations are likely.
Distributing the food
The food will be distributed via Trussell’s partner Food and Community Trust (FCT), which also runs Sheffield S6 Foodbank.
FCT supplies food to over 50 of the food banks in the Trussell community across the UK.
The cans of chilli con carne will be purchased by the Stelios Foundation from Kiril Mischeff Limited, a food and ingredient supplier. It can be found in many UK supermarkets under the Rodina brand, with a retail price of almost £2 per can of 400 grams.
The cans will be donated to Trussell and are cobranded with the three logos:
- Stelios Foundation
- Trussell
- Rodina
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, creator and owner of the easy family of brands and founder and President of the the UK registered charity Stelios Philanthropic Foundation said:
“I am pleased to expand our Food From the Heart programme to the UK and begin our partnership with Trussell to support food banks across the country”.
Emma Revie, Chief Executive of Trussell Trust, thanked the Stelios Foundation, saying:
“Food bank teams are working tirelessly to help people unable to afford the essentials and thanks to the generosity of partners like the Stelios Foundation, they can continue to provide vital emergency support in their communities, while we work together to end the need for food banks in the UK. Thank you.”
- Stelios offers £50,000 prize for top disabled entrepreneur (5 August 2014)
- Easyjet founder pledges half his fortune to charity (12 June 2017)
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.