Community Kitchens

Community kitchens (CK) can be described as a group of individuals coming together to cook healthy nutritious food (Many Hands, 1998).       St. Clair West Services for Seniors is very fortunate to be the recipient of funding from Toronto Community Housing's (TCH) Social Investment Fund (SIF) to be used for the development and operation of community kitchens in 3 Toronto Community Housing sites: Doug Saunders Apartments, Outlook Manor and Roselawn Marlee.

Attendance at the community kitchens varies from13 to 15 participants at Roselawn-Marlee up to 28 participants at Outlook Manor.  Community kitchens are participatory.  The groups meet on a regularly scheduled basis (once a week) and prepare selected recipes.  Food preparation tasks and clean-up tasks are delegated equitably.  Participants are learning new culinary techniques and, for some, learning to make better food choices. 

There is evidence of growing community support and social networking within the buildings and stories of acceptance and inclusion.  A recent participant survey conducted at each site documented the benefit of the program to participants.  Many spoke of enjoying the togetherness, friendship and cooperation amongst their CK group.  Some said the community kitchen helped out when money is low and many commented that the food was good.

 Below are a few photos of the community kitchen at Outlook Manor: