Blog: My experience visiting City Catering’s summer holiday lunch programmes
City Catering Southampton Marketing Executive, Jordan Porter reflects on his visit to several City Catering Lunch Crowd programmes.
Last week I visited some of our summer holiday activity lunch clubs to see all of the great work we have been doing over the summer holidays. The City Catering Lunch Crowd initiative has been funded this year by Southampton City Council and the Holiday, Activities and Food Fund and works in collaboration with activity partners by opening our school kitchens for free-to-attend holiday clubs, to serve hot nutritious lunches to families.
My first stop was Swaythling Primary School where I got the chance to see first-hand one of our amazing kitchen teams prep lunchtime meals for several summer holiday clubs for children across Southampton. I got to witness our talented kitchen staff work in full-flow preparing a variety of lunch options including a tasty vegetable Pasta, a fresh Chicken and/or Margherita veg option pizza as well as a Chick Pea veg cake.
I then took a tour to one of our Lunch Crowd club beneficiaries, Southampton City Farm to see a lunch service being provided and witness what a huge huge success our catering support had been. I was informed by the City Farm staff that our Beetroot Chocolate Cake and the Vegetable pasta dishes are particular hit amongst the children!
(Above: City Catering CEO Rachel Hall helping to deliver lunch to ActiveMe 360’s holiday club at St. Mary’s Primary School supported by Southampton City Council’s transportation of meals over the summer activities )
I also got similar feedback when I visited one of ActiveMe 360’s lunch services in St. Mary’s Primary School to see all of the fantastic work they have been changing lives by improving health and wellbeing using the power of physical activity, sport and education. ActiveMe 360 also received Cooking at Home boxes, offering families the opportunity to cook meals such as our stir-fry with crispy egg recipe at home, to learn and explore healthy home-cooking.
My final stop was at Fairisle Primary School where I got to observe a cooking activity with the incredibly talented Masterchef winner and Southampton raised, Shelina Permalloo.
(Above: City Catering’s Charitable Impact Manager Jess helping Shelina Permalloo’s cooking session at Fairisle Junior School)
Shelina was at Fairisle giving some lucky children the opportunity to cook as part of the Southampton Holiday Activities & Food Programme. The children were extremely enthusiastic and the homemade pizzas went down a treat.
The visits, and the clubs, were a huge success and truly brought home all the important work we are doing in Southampton. It was truly eye-opening to see for some families how important it can be for holiday provision during the summer break.