HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Lucy May set up The Organic Cookery School in 2004, with Frances Williams, after collaborating on a Lottery-funded extended learning program. Many of the schools who benefitted from this project wanted to continue offering cookery and nutrition courses to children and parents, but lacked the confidence, resources and skills in house to make this happen.

Soon after, The Organic Cookery School was born - a not for profit organisation which aimed to promote and deliver cookery and nutrition activities to children, families & young people and train teachers and volunteers to expand the provision within their own setting.

After a successful pilot in 2005, offering afterschool cookery clubs to children who were struggling academically, they extended the programme to include family learning, which is now a main focus of many funded Organic Cookery School projects.

Our achievements:

Since setting up in 2004, we have taught over 50,000 children and parents in schools, libraries and children’s centres across the South East of England.

We’ve trained and provided employment and supported volunteering opportunities to over 60 teachers, tutors and volunteers.

We have been finalists for the last three years in the British Cookery School Awards in the category of community engagement.

How have we achieved this:

The support of funding organisations such as the BIG Lottery and People’s Health Trust, and our work with a number of local authorities as approved family learning delivery partners, has been critical to our ability to identify and respond to need, and develop programmes which have a proven impact on the people we work it. But it’s not all about funding, and we reach as many if not more people annually through our social enterprise trading activities.

The future:

Our business plan for 2017-20 includes the expansion of our geographical reach, through the launch of an accredited tutor training programme. This will increase our capacity to offer our services to schools, children’s centres and community organisations and create work and volunteering opportunities across the UK.

There are so many benefits to cooking with your children. The Primary school teacher in me would flag up all the embedded Maths and English skills your children will get to practise, the Early Years specialist thinks motor skills and creativity and the Foodie in me knows just how much children benefit from learning about great ingredients and flavours from an early age.

And there’s clearly a demand -  thousands of parents come to us every year wanting to expand their cooking repertoire and find out more about their family’s changing nutritional needs, or just to find a local opportunity for their child or teenager to cook with others.

Teenagers want to know how to fend for themselves – cooking from scratch and learning how to budget and meal plan are essential life skills, which many young people leave home without.

When Lucy isn’t writing funding applications or trialling new recipes, she offers a mentoring service to would be social enterprise and non-profits start- ups and sits on the board of Little Sprouts, another UK based non-profit which benefits families in extreme need.

COMMUNITY PROJECTS

MEET THE TEAM

PARTNERS AND FUNDERS