Fighting Hunger is a Community Effort
Posted by Liz Long on Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Every community wants its members to be happy and healthy, and the people of Ontario, Oregon have shown this desire in their eagerness to assist the Oregon Food Bank’s Southeast Oregon Services by offering Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters courses. Community members from many different organizations have been excited to contribute to our goal of offering low-income families cooking skills and nutrition education. As the result of this enthusiasm, our nascent program promises not only to connect our participants with each other and new ways to enjoy food, but to further connect them to their community resources. We hope that these contributions will make our Cooking Matters program a vital building block in the construction of a food secure Southeast Oregon. Meet some of our community partners.
Nancy G., Director of Our Community Garden.
Nancy will be a guest instructor in two of our courses.
She’ll bring freshly picked veggies from the garden and speak about cooking with seasonal and local produce. This will help participants stretch their food dollars (since seasonal produce is more affordable) and give them information on starting their own gardens, where the supply of fresh vegetables would be cheap and abundant.
Renae Corn, Guest Instructor
She owns a local wheat farm with her spouse.
She delivered a fantastic Cooking Matters lesson on whole grains, even providing delicious brownies and bread — both made from whole wheat flour—for our participants to try.
Local Churches
Our summer courses, which started in mid-July, are being held in church kitchens, both of which are wonderfully designed and fit our needs perfectly.
The heads of these churches have graciously donated their space because they support Share our Strength’s mission of ending hunger by teaching people basic nutrition education and cooking skills.
Oregon Food Bank’s Southeast Oregon Services Branch
Our program is housed in the Oregon Food Bank’s Southeast Oregon Services Branch, which means we have the advantage of knowing what foods are available to clients of local pantries. With the help of pantry managers and other Food Bank staff, we are able to identify which products are abundant in the pantries, and which ones clients may need some guidance to cook with.
Since many Cooking Matters participants are also clients of food pantries, we tailor our recipes to include those ingredients, thus further helping our participants fight hunger in affordable ways.
Margie Y., one of our chef volunteers, has been a cook at a local community meal site for years, and has a lot of experience with making meals from pantry items. We are so glad to have her on our team!
Red Apple Grocery Store
Our Cooking Matters group visited the store last week for a tour and some healthy-meal shopping.
The butcher gave purchasing and cooking advice to the group.
The management provided us with coupons, as well as a space for our group to meet and have a brief lesson before the tour began.
Ontario WIC Clinic
Their nutritionist will be visiting our classes as a guest nutrition instructor and looks forward to providing our participants with information on healthy fats.
We are collaborating with the clinic so their clients, participants in our courses, can get a required WIC nutrition education credit by attending.
They donated some food models to us so we can better illustrate portion sizes to Cooking Matters participants.
Fighting hunger is a community effort. The Cooking Matters program makes a winning contribution to that fight by teaching families how to eat better on a budget; that contribution is multiplied when other community organizations and members are a part of the same mission. I feel grateful to be a part of a community that is so supportive of the work we are doing, and I know that our participants will benefit greatly from the Cooking Matters courses, especially in combination with the efforts of the community on the whole
August 16, 2011 | 2 comment(s) | Tags: community, cooking matters, no kid hungry
Comments
2 reader comments so far.
Yeah, Liz! You're doing amazing work! I hope I get to visit Ontario sometime soon!
Posted by Dorothy on August 17, 2011
Wow! What progress in a few short months. Congratulations. I am impressed by the multiple partners you have incorporated to bring so many resources to CM participants. Your work is transforming the community, one family at a time. Well done!
Posted by Leslie on August 18, 2011
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