Why The Big Spoon food program matters for Canberra

I've always had a passion for food and cooking. But for the last 20 years I've been balancing that passion with demanding roles in social housing and disability in the government and community sectors. I also stepped out of 9-5 work a couple of times to run restaurants, which gave me the opportunity to satisfy the foodie entrepreneurial streak that was always simmering just below the surface.

But until recently, I had seen these two different sides of my life as separate but equally involving. Over the years of working with disadvantaged people, I frequently encountered people who ate poorly, and often alone. They often struggled with many aspects of their lives and had never been exposed to the things that I'd taken as givens – nutritious and home cooked food eaten with family and friends.

I tried to place food and cooking at the cultural centre of all things, along with education, employment, good health care and housing. And then it dawned on me that there must be a way to bring my passions together. The opportunity came unexpectedly, early in 2014, when the community organisation I was working for underwent a restructure and I suffered health issues. It was the first time in my career that I had been unceremoniously "let go" from a workplace. I felt vulnerable but I was now able to devote some time to bringing those passions for food and social programs together.

OK, so I could identify a significant knowledge gap around the basics of home cooking, nutrition and general food safety for people who were struggling to cope with life, in one way or another. Obviously, I wasn't the first person to have this idea. But in a world where community organisations were trying to provide realistic and practical interventions that could actually make a difference in people's lives, how could I make my ideas relevant?

There was no shortage of challenges. Where should I begin? How could I connect with the people I wanted to work with? Where would I hold the training sessions? What organisations did I need to be working with? I worked methodically through these issues, overcoming obstacles where I encountered them to develop carefully designed cooking programs that I thought would match the profiles of many of my former clients. The feedback I got from my networks was that there was a significant gap for many vulnerable people where once family, social and community would have connected them to basic, nutritious and socially inclusive eating.

And so I formed The Food Collective, the company through which I run The Big Spoon food programs. The programs are designed for vulnerable groups of people who get help from a variety of support organisations. They're young mums, older people who are alone in the community, young people, the unemployed, any group receiving assistance through a support organisation or agency.

The program takes the form of staged sessions or one-off activities, using existing community or commercial kitchens. The sessions are tailored to the needs of participants and can stand alone or fit into broader activities or programs. The Big Spoon generally runs for seven to 10 weeks - one 90 minute session a week, where I teach the basics of kitchen health and safety and then move on to simple, healthy home cooking and then more complex recipes.

The Big Spoon programs help with broader physical and mental health challenges such as obesity, providing accessible pathways to employment and training, and can improve wellbeing and productivity in the workplace. The program also makes a difference to people who are isolated in the community.

Last year we delivered The Big Spoon Food Matters program to a group of young people at Lake Ginninderra College. And I approached Jamie's Italian in Canberra to discuss their potential involvement in the program. Staff at Jamie's were wholehearted supportive - they opened their professional kitchen to the participants and inducted them in workplace health and safety. It was a watershed moment for many of the students - and it was a humbling experience for me to be a part of it.

See thefoodcollective.net