On Friday 23 June, 11 students from refugee backgrounds spent the evening cooking up a storm in the kitchen!
From a vegetable stir-fry to a cheesy macaroni, and coffee made to order, the students catered for over 30 people (including their parents!) in celebration of the last day of their nine-week Community Kitchen program.
The Community Kitchen program has run for six years with the purpose of providing students with career skills in hospitality, community connection, and an opportunity to build confidence and English language skills.
Empowering young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is essential to ensure that language barriers, financial difficulties, and other challenges don’t prevent students from thriving and settling well into their new community.
Photos: students practicing their barista skills and cooking in the kitchen.
Each year a new set of students participate in the Community Kitchen program, with this year’s students coming from the Geelong English Language Centre, North Geelong Secondary College, Northern Bay College, St. Joseph College and Sacred Heart College.
In addition to the above collaboration, the program has also been made possible with the support of the Geelong Food Relief Centre, Norlane Community Centre and Barwon Health – who respectively provided the weekly ingredients, the kitchen and dining space for the students, and the Community Kitchen Facilitators Training – as well as compassionate volunteers.
Photos: students cooking and serving food at their final Community Kitchen celebration; and a student displaying his certificate of participation.
This year we were delighted to welcome Sebastian into our Community Kitchen program, as he completed his student placement through The Gordon and our CatholicCare Victoria Settle Well program.
Sebastian hosted the program each week with students, and worked behind the scenes to ensure the program ran smoothly. We spoke with Sebastian to hear more about his experience and the Community Kitchen program – see below!
We thank everyone who has made the Community Kitchen program possible this term, and we congratulate the students on their participation - and their newfound cooking and barista skills!
Liz Gellel | Manager, External Marketing and Communications