Fire Fighters are leading the way in promoting good food, safe cooking and healthy eating, as part of their mission to make Merseyside a safer, stronger and healthier community. A pilot scheme, which is part of Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food campaign, has been completed successfully.
The Firefighters worked with five students who then passed on their learning to another five, and these students “passed it on” to a further five people. So in each session, fifteen students learnt recipes to pass onto at least two people each.
The course ran for eight weeks, starting with simple recipes, and cooking more complicated meals as the skills, confidence and autonomy of the students increased. The healthy eating recipes are designed to demonstrate how easy, quick and cheap back to basic cooking can be, especially in today’s economic climate.
The pilot proved a great success, running with a group of adults who had low level learning difficulties. They were seeking to live independently, but some of them had never cooked.
As a result of the course, the students have become ‘Ministry of Food Ambassadors’ for people in their local disabled communities and a local college has approached Mersyeside Fire & Rescue Service about further places for their learning difficulties students.
More information about the scheme is available from the IDeA. http://www.localinnovation.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=19956616