Cooking for Careers:Development and personal growth through the lens of food

AIMING HIGH

Back in summer 2022 we were lucky enough to receive a large pot of funding from the European Social Fund (ESF) - the main instrument used by the EU for investing in people all over Europe, helping millions each year improve their lives by learning new skills and finding better jobs. This funding allowed us to develop a ‘Cooking for Careers’ course which ran monthly over a 12-month period. The premise for the course was to take a ten people at a time and offer them 4 weekly workshops in our kitchen, with the ambition to help them progress into employment or training within one month of finishing the course.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

What stood out about this course was the diversity of the participants that signed up. We had referrals from a multitude of local agencies and charitable organisations (Number 11, Restart, JET, Opendoor, YMCA) and the participants had a range of complex needs and backgrounds, as well as most being long-term unemployed. We knew from the off that this may present some challenges in terms of giving participants the time and assistance they needed to make progress and develop effectively. We had a short amount of time in which to help; targets to meet and progression figures and paperwork to submit. But surely the focus of this course, and any personal development course in fact, should be first and foremost to connect with the individuals involved, help them to connect to themselves and discover what makes them, as an individual, so great? So how do we translate cooking into positive change for the self, and then further into tangible employability skills?

TRAILBLAZING

You may wonder what we mean when we say ‘self-development through the lens of food?’. Many of us will have experienced the therapeutic benefits of cooking a meal from scratch, or simply spending time in the kitchen being mindful and following a process. Process driven activity is proven to increase ability and confidence in decision making, creative and critical thinking, and assertiveness – all essential components of a productive work life. What we didn’t want was for this course to become a box ticking exercise for the long term unemployed, a means to get them into a generic job where they were under stimulated and experienced discontent. We’ll put our hands up and say that we didn’t get everyone into employment or training within one month of the course, but what we can be sure of is that we helped the participants feel part of something great, connect to their power and open a world of possibility for the future. What we do is think creatively, long term, to find proactive solutions to flawed systems. We’re the change makers – are you with us?