Food Standards Agency
Saturday 4 July 2009
Safer food better business banner
AZ-Directory
What's NewRSS
What is RSS?Listen
Listen to this siteWednesday 11 April 2007
The Food Standards Agency has announced the winners of the 2007 Sheila McKechnie Award. The awards this year go to a project working with young mums in the Isle of Wight and a kids café in Leamington Spa.
The FSA established the awards in September 2004 to commemorate the contribution that Dame Sheila McKechnie made in helping to set up the Food Standards Agency in 2000. Sheila McKechnie was a lifelong consumer champion, having previously been director of Shelter and later Consumers' Association (now known as Which?).
The winners will receive £15,000 over a three year period to help develop their services.
The local food initiative was selected from more than 50 applications from across the UK by a panel of judges that included the Food Standards Agency Chair Deirdre Hutton, news broadcaster Jon Snow and Tim Lang Professor of Food Policy at City University.
The winners are Healthy Eating for Life from the Isle of Wight, and Flava Café from Leamington Spa.
This year's runners-up are The Corner House Youth Project: Café 98 from Stockton and Food Skills for Life from Bournemouth.
Back to topHealthy Eating for Life, run by the charity GFS Platform, Sandown Bay in the Isle of Wight, works with young women between the ages of 14 and 25 who are either pregnant, or who have young children, or who for other reasons are excluded from many aspects of mainstream society.
The Isle of Wight is a predominately rural area and its separation from the mainland brings with it a unique set of issues, including a narrow and fragile economy that depends on the tourist industry, seasonal low-paid employment, an expensive and infrequent transport system, a lack of specialist medical and social care services, limited access to education for those over 16 years of age, and the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the south east of England.
While the island is a popular holiday destination, a lack of accessible amenities and services results in hardship for many who live there. Many of the young women who use the Healthy Eating services have underachieved in school and face additional challenges, such as debt, abuse, homelessness and substance misuse. Many are isolated from partners, friends and family and find coping alone with the demands of a baby difficult.
Due to some of these issues, the young woman have great difficulties gaining access to healthy, affordable, high quality foods and so have limited choices. GFS Platform, Sandown Bay has successfully run Healthy Eating and cooking on a budget programmes in the past. A clear need to develop this work had been identified as many young mothers have not had any experience of cooking or shopping on a limited budget. In addition, many young mothers live in temporary, often sub-standard, bed and breakfast accommodation that provides them with limited access to cooking facilities.
Through 'Healthy Eating for Life, A Young Mums' Project', the aim is to increase the young mothers' awareness of healthy eating, food content and labelling, and issues for their children, such as school dinners, healthy lunchboxes and budgeting for meals and shopping.
The aims are also to progress the projects to allow space for the women to explore food inequalities in their lives, enabling and encouraging community involvement, participation and to take action, not only for themselves, but for other young women, too.
Back to topFlava Café is in the heart of Leamington Spa: a food learning and voluntary action café, working with a range of community members, including people on a low income, children, lone parents, long-term unemployed people, older people, ethnic and religious minorities.
At the heart of the venture is a vegetarian café, the 'Veggie table', providing healthy nutritious vegetarian and vegan food to people on a low income. The staff, volunteers and users create an atmosphere that is vibrant, interactive and inclusive. Each week more than 900 people use their services, enabling local people to access facilities, resources, support information and education.
For all users, the café forms a hub for a wide range of food projects, enabling the development of self-help skills, and promoting education and training, so that users can gain further skills and experience of food preparation, menu planning and budgeting.
Cookery workshops are delivered in a familiar and informal way by a food development worker. They incorporate a wide range of cookery skills while exploring many cultural, ethnic and local dishes.
The project realises that many young people today have very little access to skills and the experience they require to understand about healthy eating and lifestyle, cooking skills and qualifications to enable them to enter the workplace and to engage effectively in the local community. The project has therefore designed a project to engage young people in the café scheme to:
Café 98 is home to The Corner House Youth Project. It provides a range of services and facilities for young people aged 13-21, particularly those experiencing problems associated with being disadvantaged and socially excluded. Poor housing and living in low income families all contribute to young people not having access to a balanced diet.
Since the youth project began in 2000, project organisers have recognised the need to provide a source of healthy food to young clients. Fruit and water bought from local producers, rather than tea/coffee, is always available during sessions. A Thursday café has been set up to provide cooking lessons and raise awareness giving access to healthy eating, balanced diet and nutrition. The organisation's ethos is that young people fully participate in developing new ideas. The advantage of this is that young people are involved in the planning, cooking and serving of the food so they receive learning and developing skills, that is, accreditation in food hygiene.
More recently, education has been provided for young people excluded from school. Many of these young people are arriving without having had any breakfast, and this lack of energy and ability to concentrate can exacerbate their challenging behaviour. For a large percentage of members, cooking is something that they are excluded from at school, or the opportunity has not been given to them at home, yet in most cases the project finds young people really enjoy participating. With funds recently granted, the youth project will be venturing into a breakfast club and a range of items needed for cookery sessions for the alternative education group.
Back to topFood Skills for Life originally arose out of work on healthy living. It focused on the most deprived areas of Bournemouth (Boscombe West, Wallisdown and Strouden Park) where an NHS study had identified significant diet-related health problems. The project aims to establish a self-perpetuating initiative which will increase people's self confidence, health and wellbeing, through developing an interest in preparing, cooking and eating healthy food. Vocational skills will therefore be increased and access to jobs developed.
The initiative, due to interest from other deprived communities and disadvantaged groups, has now extended its focus to promote basic cooking skills and a healthy diet to other deprived wards in the borough specifically, but not exclusively, targeting disadvantaged and socially excluded groups.
Projects in development for 2006/7 include:
Find out what our other sites have to offer