Family Cookery working in the community to improve diets and social relations a partnership with CHP

A case study that forms part of the Big Lottery Fund National Well-being Evaluation CLES Consulting was commissioned in 2008. It proved that cookery classes for children and their parents was not only be beneficial but it created not only an improved diet and understanding of healthy eating but also stronger family relations, enhanced social well-being, increased confidence and self-esteem and wider impacts on communities.

It’s true! It works!

Our main activity is the delivery of a course to teach children how to cook and bring that knowledge back home to the family, demonstrating how the family could cook healthy home-made food together in their home.

The courses run for 5 weeks during the school summer holiday and consist of weekly classes teaching basic cookery skills to small groups of children and sometimes their parents.

So far, we are finding that the course helped them understand how cookery could be so much fun and something they definitely wanted to take home and share with their families.

CHP is providing funding for all the cookery classes and each child with a take away bag from the day’s recipe filled with goodies and the ingredients to teach at home the recipe they had learned that day. Making it a social activity they could do as a family together.

Felicitous Foodology are providing allocated core cost funding and are running the course, providing the children with nutritional lessons along with cookery classes.

OUR OUTCOMES SO FAR

Mums loved the nutritional education of the course one mum said ‘for the nutrition content alone I found this workshop so beneficial ‘

Her beautiful daughter said ‘it was probably the best lesson I have ever had’

Children love to cook, they love learning about food, the benefits of eating good food and tasting new and exciting foods they have never experienced.

WHY THESE PROJECTS WORK IN COMMUNITIES

Children are our future and investing in their health now only pays off for everyone’s future.

We’ve found in the past, community cookery learning, ito be something that communities love to come together and learn. Everyone benefits including the larger community when knowledge is transferred.

Cookery workshops have a place in our communities, there are many on offer for those who can afford their services. But for those on lower incomes and financially unable to afford them, having funded projects like this means that those families in our communities can access them and benefit too.