PEIC
Learn about campus greening initiative.
What:
Cooking for Kids
When:
Mondays, 6:30 p.m.
Where:
Virginia Wesleyan College
For more information:
(757) 455-3216
Virginia Wesleyan students prepare hot after-school meals for area schoolchildren
Cooking for Kids started out as a pilot project during the summer and has since become a regular occurrence on the Virginia Wesleyan campus. The objective? To create a sustainable program that prepares meals for Kid’s Café programs – Foodbank programs that bring hot meals or nutritional snacks to needy children in organized summer and after-school programs.
Members of the Virginia Wesleyan community and chefs-in-training from Johnson & Wales University in Norfolk join forces with on-campus dining service professionals and the Kid’s Café program of the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia to prepare the meals on a weekly basis.
Last summer, Wesleyan seniors Shani Green, Vitillia Wiltshire and Melissa Vindigni, junior Martha Blevins, and sophomore Shannon Kamanuwai joined forces with staff members like Cindy Smith and Elaine Aird to prepare 3,000 meals for area schoolchildren to get the Cooking for Kids program going. Sophomores Danielle DunMoodie and Elizabeth Allen and freshmen Candice Meher and Brian Reyburn are among the volunteers now working on preparing meals.
The crew has since linked up with Johnson & Wales students and now meets on Mondays in the Wesleyan kitchen to prepare the meals. A popular example is “Weenie Mac,” created and named on the spot by Wesleyan chef Vincent Lamont and consisting of a myriad of foods such as cheese, macaroni, hot dogs and broccoli that arrive by the truckload from the Foodbank. Meals are then picked up and delivered to schools, clubs and community centers where after-school programs in low-income areas ensure a safe environment for students whose parents work.
Last year, the Foodbank’s Kid’s Café programs served more than 125,000 after-school meals. The meals prepared in Wesleyan’s kitchen will feed between 300 and 600 kids every week.
Cooking for Kids meets Monday nights from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Wesleyan kitchen.
For more information, contact Diane Hotaling, director of community service, at (757) 455-3216.
Or, for more news and events at Virginia Wesleyan College, visit the Events Calendar.