Food Action has been named as a finalist for one of two $25,000 grants from the EpicureTM Foundation’s 2018 Community Grant Initiative for a new project called Cooking for Community.
Food insecurity is a growing concern in the Okanagan. Cooking skills are important to food security, but skills can’t improve food access for people who lack the resources to buy or cook healthy food for themselves, the Society said.
“I see the growing homeless population out there and feel helpless. We want to create something that might help. Since we’re running cooking classes anyway, why not cook healthy meals for others at the same time?” Samara Sonmor, Food Action’s executive director, said.
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Cooking for Community encourages community members to prepare meals for those who can’t cook for themselves. The program seeks to raise awareness of food insecurity and give the community cooks a way to help people in need while improving their own cooking skills.
The project consists of a weekly cooking class and a community kitchen where people from all walks of life learn to cook healthy fresh food. Every session, the Society selects a demographic in need (seniors, homeless, at-risk youth) and focuses their recipes and meal preparation to meet their nutritional needs. The meals prepared will be distributed afterwards to those people at no cost.
While there are weekday meal services in Vernon, none operate on Sundays. The Society hopes that this program may help fill that gap.
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Food Action ran a pilot kitchen in early November in collaboration with HOPE Outreach Vernon. More than 45 meals were distributed to homeless people.
Sonmor hopes this will be a hands-on, practical way for community members to come out and help those in need, but funding is needed to get the kitchens up and running.
Community support is needed to secure the funding, Sonmor said. The grant is awarded based on public online voting from Nov. 26 to Dec. 16.
To vote, visit surveymonkey.com/r/epicuregrant2018. For more information, follow the Food Action Society of the North Okanagan on social media and visit www.foodaction.ca.
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