Holiday Kitchen

Project description:
The purpose of the Cegin Prydiau Plant project was to provide support and access to meals for families living in areas of poverty and deprivation during children holiday periods, by providing families with weekly training provision in cooking nutritional meals on a budget.

What will the project achieve?
It provided parents/carers and their children living in the Cardigan area, identified as economically deprived with the skills to; Make informed choices regarding providing nutritionally balanced meals for their families, provide opportunities for parents/carers and their children to develop food preparation and cookery skills, and source and buy food and ingredients knowledgeably and within a budget.

What were the results of the project?  
The ‘Cegin Prydiau Plant’ project has been a positive experience for individuals and their families. The majority of participants’ confidence in shopping, budgeting and preparing meals for the family increased.  One participant now has the confidence to cook meals from scratch following the 10 week programme,

“I now mostly use fresh home-made food from scratch, much tastier and I know what’s in the meal.”

Before the project began it was evident that one of the parental concerns was putting meals on the table for their children due to financial difficulties. Post course the participants were now well informed on how to cook healthier meals from scratch and on a budget.

"A bag of spuds is way cheaper than buying frozen chips, and healthier, I now only use a little bit of oil to cook them”

said one Mother. The skills acquired by the individuals as a result of the training will continue to be seen and developed.

“Before, I’d always buy ready-made cheese sauces and different bits. I’d always buy the sauces because I wasn’t a hundred percent – and curry sauces – but now I know how to do them from scratch, and they’re quite easy when you know how”.

 
Overall, over 60 families benefited the project and over 5600 meals were prepared. ‘Cegin Prydiau Plant' has been a resounding success with a number of parents noting that on top of saving money and learning how to cook a nourishing meal ready to eat in the evening, it meant spending more ‘quality time with my children without worrying about what we’re going to eat tonight’. 
 
What’s next for the project?
An independent evaluation highlighted a number of r ecommendations to take the project forward, including, extending the project to neighbouring counties, further monitoring of the take up of free meals and ingredients available to former participants, and targeting male participants to widen the scale of support. 

Jigso - Cegin Prydau Plant.pdf

[.PDF, 4.34 MB]