Project: Classroom kitchen
Grant: £5,000
Fund: HoB General
Empower to Cook CIC is a social enterprise that provides cookery classes, food education and consultancy to children, community groups, families and corporates.
They were awarded a grant to carry out their classroom kitchen project across four primary schools in areas of deprivation.
The funding has enabled 40 healthy eating workshops to take place, reaching 218 children. A further 102 adults also came to their parent and child workshops.
The workshops involved learning about healthy eating, using games to reinforce understanding as well as making and tasting healthy foods. The project also included cooking sessions with emphasis on fun, skills and tasting.
Taste was a key part of the workshops with many children trying new foods, including: pineapple, kiwi, roasted vegetables, greek yogurt, porridge, seeded flatbreads, rice cakes, and wholemeal bread. At the end of each workshop the children had something to take home to prompt discussion with their families and encourage them to apply their learning.
At the heart of this programme is a fun approach to learning about healthy food along-with tasting and making foods. The children are inspired to make healthy everyday choices, keep treats as treats (they call them ‘sometimes foods’) and taste new or previously disliked foods.
My child was greatly influenced by your programme. She learnt what is healthy food in our daily life and built up an awareness of how much sugar should be consumed in a day. She was very proud to show me the food she learnt to make in this programme. Now she chooses to drink water most of the time instead of drinking juice all day. I really hope you can continue this programme and deliver more healthy eating concepts to our children.
– Received by email from the parent of a child who typically eating only two vegetables and no fruits daily
