Stevenage FC Foundation needs YOUR help...
We are urging all our supporters to VOTE for Stevenage FC Foundation's Community Kitchen Project, as part of Aviva's Community Fund.
Be quick. The vote closes at 11am on Tuesday 20th November 2018 and you could help secure £25,000 worth of funding to help improve the lives of Stevenage familes.
- Click HERE to register for a FREE Aviva account, allowing you to vote for the Community Kitchen. It is an incredible local project and with each registered user being able to cast 10 votes EACH, you could really make a difference.
What's the Community Kitchen?
In early 2018, two local residents local to Stevenage decided that they wanted to put the fun back into meal times and get families spending quality time together. From a chance conversation the idea of the Community Kitchen was born.
On 6th October 2018, the first EVER Community Kitchen session ran with six families from all areas of Stevenage, with the aim of helping families to cook healthy, simple meals without breaking the bank but most importantly spending time together and having fun!
In Stevenage, over 1 in 4 children are classed as obese by the time they reach Year 6 at school (age 11) and the same number are deemed to be living in Poverty by local authority statistics. The Community Kitchen aims to tackle both of these local challenges head on by offering friendly, supportive advice and new ideas to eat well without forking out (pun intended) for all the latest food fads.
The Community Kitchen has lofty ambitions, with the long term aim of helping all areas of the community make a positive life change whether that be through new skills, employment, healthier diet, more physically active or simple being happier by spending more time with their loved ones.
Who knows, one day we might see a Community Kitchen restaurant in our local town centre!
But for now, this grant will allow the Community Kitchen to take that next step along that journey by allowing an additional five courses to be delivered during 2019 which will begin to look at other less-advantaged members of our community.
The expected outcomes from the Community Kitchen are:
- Target 6-8 families per 8-week course to complete the programme, with the aim of working with 180-200 people over the course of a twelve-month period
- A minimum of 60 adults to complete a Level 1 & 2 Food Hygiene qualification giving them new skills
- Improve participant knowledge of what a healthy diet contains
- Improve individual and collective family confidence when cooking food with fresh ingredients
- Increase the level of enjoyment that families take from cooking as a group activity
- Improve adult understanding of budgeting within their means to eat a minimum of 3 “healthy meals” per week
- Positively affect behaviour associated to cooking to improve dietary intake of participants
Each Community Kitchen course will cover the following theory topics:
- Eatwell Guide
- Kitchen Hygiene
- Weekly Meal Planning & Budgeting
- Importance Of Physical Activity
- Hydration
- Sugar Swaps
- Importance Of 5 A Day
All the topics and recipes are collated in the projects Family Plan that has been designed to give families an interactive workbook that they can complete together and take home to replicate recipes and come up with their own ideas.
At the end of each course, Stevenage FC Foundation will host a "graduation" event giving the families an opportunity to celebrate completing the course and enjoy a family day out.
By voting for this project you are voting for young children in our local community to develop fantastic life habits of eating well, learning how to cook simple, nutritious meals and give families the opportunity to have a shared experience and put two hours aside each week to have some fun in the Community Kitchen that can be replicated in their homes day in, day out.
Click HERE to register and remember, you can vote up to TEN times per person!
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