I set up Gio’s Italian Restaurant in 2013 in a community centre in Bloxwich, with the aim to use cooking as a vehicle to bring wellness and opportunities to the local community. From the success of Gio’s and several years of ground root initiatives I established Taste for Life Community CIC in 2018.
Since this we have delivered a series of small work cooking shops and training courses for groups of up to 20 people, resulting in helping people into jobs and helping them we their personal issues.
Throughout the Covid lockdown, we also helped to deliver 2000 food parcels and cooked food. Unfortunately Covid hit us hard too, the restaurant closed and this put us in a difficult situation. Nevertheless we still managed are still collecting surplus food from supermarkets to distribute to local families who are in difficult times.
Having recently secured new premises in Willenhall Memorial Park allows us to upscale the opportunities and services we can offer. Not only will our presence attract people to the local park, we want to emphasize what a great resource is available and that we wish to maximize its full potential. This will also lead us to working with the council’s Healthy Space Teams on future wellbeing initiatives aimed at spreading health awareness for the community.
This now brings us to our next project. Men Matter. We want to set up a podcast about men's mental health whilst engaging in a cooking program.
The cooking activity will be the distraction mechanism, instead of turning to abusive substance or falling into bad thoughts etc, cooking will become that coping stratergy.
Cooking has been proven to be a therapeutic activity and we believe making this a group activity will increase the success rate of our outcomes. Let's not forget the additional benefits of healthy eating, and again this will tackle the common issue of malnutrition which is one of the consequences of mental health problems.
We want to create a place for all those that do not have the luxury of calling somewhere home. A place that ressembles a family enviroment, Where they feel comfortable to open up and share their problems and help each other. A place they know they can turn to!
