Community Kitchen
Our Community Kitchen will be a hand-on learning environment for registered Life Skills participants during their 15 week program as they acquire the skills necessary to create healthy and affordable meals. Rising food costs are a challenge to lower-income individuals and families. The repercussions of poor nutrition can be seen in compromised childhood mental and physical development, increased rates of obesity and chronic diseases. Our program will focus on building the skills of nutrition basics, reading food labels, meal planning and budgeting for family meals.The public will be welcome to join the cooking experience in the community kitchen.
As our name suggests, the Wellness Through Living Community Kitchen will also be available to any community member with that has an active membership. Our Community Kitchen is modeled after the successful Community Kitchen Program written and put into operation by Marilyn Gunn of Calgary, AB. Those who choose to participate in a cooking session for the week will be required to attend that week’s planning session on Monday evening.
We intend that the Community Kitchen will be managed by two on-staff Kitchen Coordinators along with volunteers, who will be responsible for overall management of the kitchen, behavior and dress codes, and conducting the weekly shop and delivery of supplies for the Saturday cook sessions. There will be an anticipated annual membership fee ($35.00) and signed registration indicating acceptance of the community kitchen requirements as detailed in the Community Kitchen Guidelines.
The structured set of guidelines is intended to make it possible for all participants to have a comfortable, safe, enjoyable place to learn about nutrition, share ideas and skills, and create affordable meals. We accept people as young as 14 years old to register from the community to join the cook sessions. Learning about nutrition through participation at an early age could build healthy habits that last a life time.
Download the Community Kitchen Guidelines (PDF).
Specialty Classes
The Community Kitchen will have a third dynamic to it: offering specialty classes in the evenings. Meaning; if people in the community would like to learn how to cook Gluten Free, Chinese Food, Japanese Food, Vegetarian, or Specialty Breads just to name a few, we will be setting up those classes and offering them in the evenings. On top of the membership fee there will be a minimal charge for the ingredients used that evening. All ingredients we use you can buy at your local store. We will keep it simple and practical.