Name: Get Dorset Cooking Dorchester
Start: 2025-01-10T09:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-01-10T16:00:00+00:00
Location: Dorchester Baptist Church

1-day course for Dorset community and voluntary groups to support staff and volunteers to plan and safely deliver your own cooking session
About this Event

Available to all Dorset community, health, social and youth based organisations!

We will look at the following areas:

Identifying the needs and understanding barriers for your community
Using different session formats and choosing the right recipe
Planning effective and safe sessions, including paperwork and risk
Practical cooking, facilities and equipment
Evaluation and funding

"The day was really motivating and now I can't wait to get started. The day was well-planned and interesting. I really enjoyed making our own lunch and it gave us a chance to network and learn from other organisations". L, Blandford

We believe that almost any group can put on some kind of cooking session and benefit your local community.

Benefits for individuals:

save money
reducing food waste
increase someone's self confidence
improve nutrition
grow social networks
improve wellbeing
improved sense of resilience, including financial resilience
longer term impacts on household income and physical health

Benefits of cooking sessions to your group:

Make more food more accessible
They can be run in conjunction with other activities, to support existing project beneficiaries
Encourage new people to come forward who need your support
Upskilling your beneficiaries you are helping improve their worlds and your communities in so many ways
Develop new social groups
Attract more volunteers
Improve your local reputation
There are many different types of cooking sessions, skills based, using food waste, community action/support or lunch clubs etc. etc.
They are a great way of crossing generations, bringing together communities and cultures.