Recipe for Cooking Matters’ Success: Dedicated Volunteers
Posted by Liz Long on Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Roxie Joyce is a new volunteer with the Cooking Matters program in Ontario, Oregon and just finished instructing her first course this fall, which was for teens. She’s a committed and vibrant individual whose love of cooking and of youth is really apparent during her classes. Her dedication and the dedication of volunteers like her, is what makes the Cooking Matters program possible.
Roxie’s work with hunger issues started last spring, when she began volunteering with a local food pantry. The amount of people using the pantry surprised her, “I feel like the clientele just about doubled in the few months that I was there.” She told me. “These every day, hard-working people just aren’t getting enough to feed their families.” She was glad to support them with the resources from the pantry. Roxie supports the Cooking Matters program because she believes it “helps families stretch their SNAP benefits and the foods they get from the pantries.”
As a mother of three boys who were close in age, Roxie used to hold mini-cooking classes with her sons and friends when they were young. Teaching Cooking Matters for Teens was a natural extension of that experience. And these teens she taught learned a lot. “When we did the activities that illustrated the amount of fat and sugar in sodas and fast foods, they were amazed. They realized that it really makes a difference.”
Teens got a chance to put all they learned into action during the last week of class for the Extreme Meal Makeover activity, in which they made healthy versions of their favorite meals. “They learned to compromise – one group made a healthier version of a chocolate cake with Oreos crumbled on top in lieu of the Oreo ice cream cake they would normally choose,” said Roxy. Everyone’s favorite recipe of the day, though, was the shrimp ceviche. “They were able to take flavors that they liked individually, like shrimp and cucumber, and bring them together in a healthy way. . When we voted for the best recipe, all hands went up for the ceviche. It was unanimous!”
I asked Roxie what she would say to others who were thinking about volunteering with the Cooking Matters program. “I’d say do it! Not only is it the right thing to do to give back to your community, but you can learn something about nutrition, budgeting, and stretching your food dollars. Because you never know when you are going to be in a place where you need those skills.”
Thank you, Roxie, and all of the volunteers who make the Cooking Matters program the success it is. We could not do it without you!
To learn more about volunteering for Cooking Matters, visit cookingmatters.org/get-involved/volunteer/.
January 3, 2012 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: AmeriCorps, cooking matters, no kid hungry, oregon
Post a comment
All fields are required (your e-mail address will not be displayed)