The idea
We want to completely renovate our kitchen so that we can provide nutritious hot meals safely for the children who attend our holiday clubs that are funded by the Holiday Activity Fund and other projects.
Alongside providing our own meals, this kitchen will also allow us to teach local residents essential cooking skills, which will also enable them to learn and pass a food hygiene course. Having an additional qualification will provide opportunities for paid work in the catering sector, therefore presenting our clients with additional opportunities to lift them and their families out of unemployment-based poverty.
We recently completed a survey with our clients, and out of 36 respondents, all said that having a working kitchen would either possibly or definitely be beneficial for the community that uses Belong Nottingham's services. Therefore, this project is supported by our clients and they are enthusiastic about the opportunities that a new kitchen would create.
What we'll deliver
- Install a fully functional catering kitchen and new flooring
Why it's a great idea
The project will enable us to meet the nutritional needs of the young people who attend Belong Nottingham's Holiday Activity Clubs during the Summer, Autumn, Christmas and Easter holidays. Currently, we have to buy hot meals from other providers, but with a new kitchen we can train staff and volunteers to cook the food needed rather than having to pay a higher rate for food to be brought into the centre. There will also be opportunities for training our staff and volunteers in food hygiene and food & nutrition which will help them develop skills for employment in the catering industry. This will help some of our service users to lift themselves and their families from poverty. As we will be cooking food on-site, we will also be reducing our environmental footprint by not transporting food to our venue for the activities.
Steps to get it done
- Completion of the installation of the catering kitchen and flooring
If we are successful with this project we will also be able to use the kitchen to provide catering options for other organisations which will bring in a sustainable income to help mitigate the loss of funding from the financial difficulties in Nottingham currently. We will also be able to use the facilities to open up our centre for other food based activities such as social eating events to help reduce isolation that many people are still experiencing in the post covid world.
