Cooking programs, for adults and for schools

An evening in our kitchen at Rozelle where locals cook around a hundred meals for neighbours who need them. You do not need to be able to cook. Somebody will show you.

The meals go out through our partnership with Good in the Hood, delivered by volunteers who mostly live within a few streets of the person receiving them. So an evening chopping onions beside a stranger turns into a knock on a door across the peninsula a day or two later.

In the school holidays and through the term, local school students come in and cook meals that go out to people in their own suburb. Most have never met anyone their food goes to, and that is usually the part that changes them.

What students actually get is a practical skill, a shift alongside adults who are not their teachers or their parents, and evidence that something they made with their hands turned up at somebody else's door. That is a difficult thing to teach in a classroom.

The program is built around local schools and it works best when a teacher is willing to be involved rather than just send a group. If that is you, get in touch and we will work out what fits your term.

We project manage the schools program using funding from Community and Family Support, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice program that brought together what used to be Targeted Earlier Intervention. Its Community Strengthening stream is for exactly this: local skills, local connection.

The adult evenings run on the same kitchen and the same volunteers as the rest of our food work, with rescued food arriving through OzHarvest and meals delivered by Good in the Hood.

If you want an evening that is good for somebody, or you teach at a school that might want in, ring us. Call 02 9556 9500 or get in touch.