Cooking Up

Cooking Up is a new charity whose aim is to enhance the health and wellbeing of people facing challenging circumstances in the London Borough of Richmond and neighboring boroughs, by enabling them to cook cheap, healthy, tasty food for themselves and their families. Our clients are referred from other agencies working in the food poverty space such as food banks, Citizen's Advice and social prescribers and we work with volunteers to arrange and deliver the teaching sessions. Clients will use our utensils and ingredients and will cook their own meal which they can take away with them or eat at our communal table. We are also aiming to provide a basic starter kit of kitchen utensils to those who need it so that they can use their new skills at home. Our aim over the next two years is to open a community kitchen in an area with high levels of food poverty, staffed by volunteers, ideally from the same area. Over the next five years we aim to develop the idea into a template that can be replicated in any area with need, with us providing the logistical assistance.