Community Kitchen about sharing food, cooking skills and meeting new friends

When you walk into the basement of the Osoyoos Baptist Church every Thursday morning, you can smell the aroma of good food, while hearing the joyous sounds of children laughing and playing.

The combination of good food,  friendship and community spirit has proven to be a recipe for success for the Community Kitchen program that has been offered to residents of Osoyoos and Oliver for the past five years.

The program involves having volunteers from the community cook a lunchtime meal for young mothers and their children, said Nancy Aatelma, the Community Kitchen program co-ordinator for the Desert Sun Resource and Counselling Centre.

Desert Sun runs the program in conjunction with the federal Community Action Plan for Children (CAPC), which has been helping run community kitchen programs across Canada since the 1970s, said Aatelma.

Even though the Community Kitchen program has been offered in Osoyoos for close to five years, the sad reality is that most local residents don’t know anything about it, she said.

“We certainly would like more people to know about the program because we think it’s a wonderful program and the people who do come out just love it,” said Aatelma. “We are averaging six to eight families every Thursday, but we certainly have room for many more.”

There are numerous benefits to the Community Kitchen as it provides an avenue for volunteers who want to contribute to helping others in their community, allows members of the community to share a healthy meal once a week, teaches cooking skills to young mothers and it allows young mothers and children to meet other young mothers and children to forge lasting friendships, she said.

“A lot of the young mothers aren’t able to get out of the house very often, but this allows them to come down here once a week and make some friends,” she said. “The children also have a great time meeting other kids and have some fun.

“Once the food is prepared, we all sit down a share a great meal.”

Many of the volunteers with the Community Kitchen program are excellent cooks and love to share their knowledge of how to prepare healthy and nutritious meals with young mothers, she said.

The menu changes from week to week.

“Everybody has input on what goes on the menu,” she said. “The volunteers make suggestions, the young mothers make suggestions and even the kids tell us what they want to eat.”

A minimal cost of only $3 per family is charged for the meal, she said.

The majority of the funding to pay for the food is shared between Desert Sun, CAPC and by donations, she said.

A couple of weeks ago, the Community Kitchen introduced a new Inter-generational kitchen component, which allowed seniors from the community to prepare the food and share their experience in the kitchen with young mothers.

The program started in late October and runs until the end of November.

“I had read about funding available through the New Horizons For Seniors program, so I applied and got some funding to start up this Inter-generational kitchen,” said Aatelma. “Osoyoos has a lot of seniors living in isolation and many of them happen to be fantastic cooks.

“I thought it would be a great idea to try and recruit a few of them to come out and share their experience in the kitchen with the young mothers in our program. We have brought the two groups together for the past few weeks and it has worked out great. A lot of seniors have a lifetime of experience cooking and preparing food and they love being able to share their secrets.”

Aatelma hopes to continue the Inter-generational kitchen as part of the Community Kitchen program in future years as long as she can continue to access funding.

“This is the first Inter-generational kitchen program anywhere in the South Okanagan and I think it’s been a great success,” she said. “Hopefully we can bring it back next year.”

The Inter-generational kitchen also helped create employment in town as Aatelma was able to hire two people for 10 weeks and one other for five weeks of work.

The Community Kitchen program runs from September until June and is suspended during the summer months, when most young families are busy and many out of town on vacation, she said.

Aatelma thanked Pastor Phil Johnson and the congregation from the Osoyoos Baptist Church for generously donating use of their kitchen and downstairs community room to run the program.

While the majority of volunteers and participants are from Osoyoos, Aatelma made it very clear volunteers and participants from Oliver are more than welcome.

“We would like more people from Oliver to get involved,” she said. “I even have funding available to help pay for gas money for anyone from Oliver who wants to be part of the Community Kitchen.”

All participants must register for the program and can do so by contacting Aatelma at 250-485-7499.

Kate Shull, a young mother of three young children, has been attending the Community Kitchen program for the past two months and can’t say enough good things about it.

“It’s fantastic,” she said. “It’s a great way to meet other young mothers and for our kids to meet other kids. You don’t get a lot of time to socialize with three young kids, so I really look forward to this every week.

“Then we get to sit down and enjoy a wonderful meal and the volunteers go out of their way to share their tips on how to cook great food.”

Jenna Wood, another young mother, agreed.

“I come down here to get out of the house, but I’ve also met some really  nice people who have become friends,” she said. “My daughter (Tamela, 4) just loves it too.

“I’ve learned a lot about cooking and we get to enjoy a great meal for next to nothing, so it’s a pretty awesome program being offered.”

The program has made such a positive impact on her and her children that Shull says she is constantly recruiting other young mothers and their children to join.

Aatelma said she is looking forward to having more people jump on board and get involved in the Community Kitchen program.

Keith Lacey

Osoyoos Times