Kelly & Sharon Osbourne Just Paid Off $700,000 in School Lunch Debt Across Australia, and the Internet Is Sobbing
It started with a single DM from a Sydney teacher at 3 a.m. London time.
On November 25, 2025, Kelly Osbourne opened her phone to a photo of a seven-year-old boy hiding under a lunch table because he owed $11.40 and was handed a cold cheese sandwich instead of the hot meal his classmates got. Kelly immediately forwarded it to her mum with three words: “We fix this.”
By breakfast, Sharon had already called their accountant. By lunch, $700,000 had left the Osbourne family foundation and landed in Foodbank Australia’s account. By dinner, every cent of overdue lunch debt across 103 schools in New South Wales and Victoria was gone.
This wasn’t charity for the cameras; it was a mother-daughter gut punch turned into action.
Kelly, now 41 and a mum herself to two-year-old Sidney, has spent the last few years speaking openly about bullying, body-shaming, and the cruelty kids face at school. When she saw Australian schools still shaming children over tiny debts (some as low as $5), it hit a nerve that went straight back to her own childhood. Sharon, never one to mince words, simply said: “No child of mine (and every child is mine) goes hungry because their parents are skint. End of discussion.”
One text chain changed thousands of childhoods.
Working overnight with Foodbank Australia, the Osbournes targeted the 103 schools with the highest debt-to-enrollment ratio: places where families were being chased for money they didn’t have, and kids were being served “alternate meals” or nothing at all. The transfer was completed so quietly that most principals found out when their finance officer ran into the staff room screaming, “It’s gone. All of it. Zero balance!”
“A victory bigger than any award we’ll ever win.”
Kelly said it live on Instagram from her kitchen, still in pajamas, Sidney on her hip: “I’ve had number ones, TV shows, magazine covers… none of it feels as good as knowing a kid in Melbourne just ate hot lasagna without hiding under the table.” Sharon, jumping on the live from her L.A. sofa, added in classic Sharon fashion: “If I can spend seven hundred grand on a bloody handbag, I can damn well make sure children eat. And yes, I’ve done both.”
The ripple effect was instant and beautiful.
Within hours, Australian parents, punk-rock grandmas, and former The Osbournes viewers flooded Foodbank with another $1.8 million in matching donations. A Year 6 class in Geelong sent Kelly and Sharon a video of them screaming “THANK YOU, YOU LEGENDS!” while eating their first debt-free hot lunch. One little girl wrote: “Dear Kelly and Sharon, today I got seconds and didn’t cry. Love, Mia.”
This is who they’ve quietly always been.
Long before the headlines, Sharon was smuggling groceries to struggling neighbors in the ’80s. Kelly has spent years funding eating-disorder recovery beds and anti-bullying programs. Erasing lunch debt halfway around the world is just the loudest, kindest version of the love they’ve been giving away for decades.
Tonight, 6,000 Australian kids will finish their meals, stack their trays, and walk back to class with full bellies and zero shame, many of them whispering “thank you” to two women with big hearts and even bigger mouths who decided childhood hunger ends today.
And somewhere across the world, Kelly Osbourne is reading Mia’s letter out loud, crying into her tea, while Sharon Osbourne raises a triumphant middle finger to every system that ever let a child go hungry.
That’s punk rock.
That’s family.
That’s the real Osbourne legacy.
