What is Food Friendzy?
Food Friendzy is a service program and volunteering opportunity where a group of parents and students come to the college to cook for the homeless. This food is collected by Salvation Army from the food room and is frozen, and given out to the homeless. The sessions last around 3-4 hours and happen on the weekends, once every term. Each time, we cook something different. Sometimes it will be rice and curry, mash potatoes and chicken, or a stew. I find it a really enjoyable and rewarding experience especially knowing that I’m helping people in need. I started doing this in year 6 because my brother was in the program and have continued through years 7-9.
Why do I do it?
Normally, me and my family members sign up to be a group in this activity. We do it because it’s a fun, engaging way to contribute to the community and being able to cook meals for them, we can see how we’re directly helping those in need. I’m able to improve my cooking skills and also my teamwork and communication with others I’m not familiar with. Cooking is one of my favourite hobbies and being able to cook with my family while providing meals for others who need it is extremely rewarding. I feel that it’s a great way to connect with the community, especially the college’s community, and know that we’re additionally helping another.
The process:
- We get into groups and assign ourselves which work station we’re going to cook in for the session.
- We collect the ingredients and recipe and assign everyone a job
- Ingredients are prepared and chopped and we start to cook
- Once everything is cooked, we bring out massive tubs and pour all the food in there to be served.
- We create a assembly line of lining up containers, portioning the food into the plastic Tupperware, putting lids on, and then stacking and counting how many portions we’ve made.
- Then, the Salvation Army comes to collect the food and transports it to where it will be frozen, and then given out to the homeless.
