Hungry to set up a Let's Get Cooking club!

  

 

Thousands of schools are hungry to set up a Let’s Get Cooking club!

 

Does your school have an extra-curricular cooking club?  Would you like to set one up?  Let's Get Cooking is a national network of cooking clubs for children, parents and the wider community, led by the School Food Trust and supported by a £20 million grant from the Big Lottery Fund.  Find out more…

Let’s Get Cooking clubs give children and parents of all ages the skills and confidence to cook nutritious and tasty meals from scratch.  The network of clubs complements the recent re-introduction of practical cooking onto the curriculum for secondary school pupils, as they involve the wider community and encourage children and young people to cook at home and eat a healthy balanced diet.   

During the first five years of the programme, the School Food Trust, with its partners, is setting up a network of 5,000 school-based cooking clubs, in a bid to teach new cooking skills to more than 1 million children and their families.  We’re signing up 3,000 brand new cooking clubs as full members and 2,000 existing cooking clubs are joining as associate clubs. 

 

Why set up a cooking club?

Through Let's Get Cooking, children and their families are learning valuable life skills as well as how to eat more healthily. A cooking club can help schools

·      to gain or maintain Healthy Schools status

·      add to Extended Schools services

·      help to meet the requirements of Every Child Matters

·      complement curriculum activities such as Science, PSHCE, Design and Technology, Literacy, Mathematics and Food Technology

·      support Licence to Cook

·      meet the new requirement for compulsory curriculum cooking in secondary schools.

What do Let's Get Cooking clubs get?

Full Let's Get Cooking clubs receive £2,500 over three years to purchase cooking equipment and to help with running costs.  They also receive free training for adult leaders and a range of resources and support.  Associate clubs are already up and running, so they receive £500 to help them open out their cooking activities to the wider community as well as access to Let’s Get Cooking resources.

How many Let's Get Cooking clubs are there?

Schools have shown a real appetite for Let’s Get Cooking! In most areas, all our full club places are filled minutes after online applications open and we have a waiting list of schools eager to access the funding, resources and training to set up a cooking club. 

Since our launch in October 2007, around 2,500 schools have successfully signed up to Let’s Get Cooking and we welcome on board around 500 new clubs every six months from every region across England.

How do we recruit full clubs?

Over the first three years of the programme we’re writing to every Headteacher in every Local Authority in England to invite them to apply to join Let's Get Cooking. Full clubs are recruited in local clusters, so that they can attend training events and develop a local network of clubs from day one.  

We only have a limited number of full club places, so schools are invited to sign up on a first-come-first-served basis via our website. Priority is given to schools that will benefit most from having a Let’s Get Cooking club, for example, those that have a higher percentage of pupils that are eligible for free school meals.  These schools are given an earlier application time and currently 45% of our clubs are based in schools which meet this criteria. Every school is given a unique invitation code which they input to our website after a specified date and time.  They find out immediately if they qualify as a full or associate club and if there are any spaces available in their Local Authority.

We have eighteen regional staff who consult Extended and Healthy Schools Coordinators, regional Food and Health leads and other local or regional cooking schemes before we visit each Local Authority.  You can view our 3-year recruitment plan on the website www. letsgetcooking.org.uk to see when we are coming to your area.

Funding for existing cooking clubs

If your school already has a cooking club, you can apply to join as an associate member and receive funding and resources.  You don’t have to wait for an invitation letter from Let's Get Cooking, you can visit our website at any time to apply.

Associate Clubs receive £500 to help open their cooking activities out to parents and members of their local community as well as a range of resources including recipes, activity ideas, wall charts and much more. You can also access the Club Zone of our website to link up with other clubs in your area and find out about competitions, training and events.

To apply to become an associate club visit www. letsgetcooking.org.uk/associate

Do they work?

So how do we keep track of what clubs are doing and their spending? Each Let’s Get Cooking club has their own page on the Let's Get Cooking website; this allows them to upload recipes, photos and brief reports on their cooking activities which are an interactive way of showing friends and relatives what members have been cooking. It’s also an important tool to monitor ongoing club activities and help them manage their funds.

A sample of the clubs are taking part in an academic research study, which evaluates the impact that Let’s Get Cooking is having on participants’ cooking skills and changes in diet and eating habits.

We are inundated with positive stories from clubs who have held cooking activities involving large numbers of people - cooking curries at Bollywood-themed community events, groups of fathers making breakfast, providing refreshments at school fetes and community picnics to name just a few. Our recent ‘Cookathon’ event had more than 24,000 people all cooking together on the same day!

There is no doubt about the demand for a programme like this as uptake has exceeded expectations. Those attending our training events inevitably depart full of excitement and are raring to get cooking back at school. Feedback following an event in Sheffield simply said, ‘We can’t wait to get going!’ Another email from a special needs school said, ’The young people really did enjoy it and are so fired up that we are going to undertake our first community event, next Friday, in conjunction with our Spring Fair!’

Another one of our Club Coordinators told us recently “The children love to cook and the feedback has been so positive with parents saying they now cook our recipes at home, both with and without the children’s help. Children come in and brag about what they made for their family meal the night before! I must also add that as club leaders, we get so much out of it too – it’s top banana!”

If you would like to find out more about Let’s Get Cooking please visit www. letsgetcooking.org.uk