Are you an experienced community cook, chef or cooking instructor and would like to help us get everyone in Oxfordshire eating more veg? Read on for a great opportunity to join our team of cooking facilitators.
Even though 90% of the population know about “5 a day” (Oxfordshire County Council, 2016), doorstep surveys in one area of Oxford found that people eat only 2.5 portions a day on average (Oxford City Council, 2016). The Veg Facts in Brief report even found that almost a third of children under ten now eat less than one portion of veg a day. This is against the backdrop of an urgent need to increase vegetable consumption and decrease meat consumption for both health and environmental reasons.
As part of our behaviour change work, Good Food Oxford supports a public campaign called Veg Places Oxfordshire with the aim to get everyone in Oxfordshire eating one more portion of veg a day. The national campaign, Veg Cities, is run by Sustainable Food Places, led by food and farming charity Sustain in partnership with the wider Peas Please project led by the Food Foundation, Nourish Scotland, Food Cardiff and WWF. The aim of Veg Cities is to increase availability and consumption of vegetables.
In 2019, we ran two six-week pilot cooking courses for older men and parents/ carers of school-age children. Both courses were well attended by residents of the surrounding areas. Read more on our blog here and here. As part of this pilot, we developed the Good Food Cooking Toolkit as a resource to teaching cooking skills without using recipes, working creatively with any ingredients that are available.
To continue this important work, we are now recruiting lead facilitators from all Oxfordshire Districts to run cooking sessions and train more volunteer cooking course tutors in their local area. This will enable more people with a passion for cooking and vegetables to run free Veg Places Oxfordshire community cooking classes across the county.
We are initially looking to recruit a batch of five lead facilitators who will work closely with the GFO Co-ordinator to develop a standardised curriculum and deliver training sessions to a cohort of volunteer cooking tutors in each District of Oxfordshire. In addition to compensation for their time, the lead facilitators get access to GFO resources including the Good Food Cooking Toolkit, the Good Food Cooking Framework guide for cooking instructors, session plans, feedback form templates and more.
If you are a talented cook, are passionate about sharing your skills and want to help empower people to be more confident in the kitchen, then we'd love to hear from you.
Click here to read the full role description and more information on how to apply. Applications close on 4th January 2021.
Update: Applications deadline now extended till 11th January 9am!
