We are very proud to be getting behind our friends at GIY Ireland who have created the Eat Together project!
Eat Together is designed to give children in Waterford an experience of eating healthy, seasonal food in a social setting at school in a 6 week programme. Once a week for those 6 weeks, GIY delivers a hot 2-course dinner to the classroom with resources for the teacher to be able to weave it in to the curriculum (therefore making it part of the teaching day, rather than part of lunch). GIY grows the food and it’s prepared at their headquarters by Head Chef JB Dubois…
Eat Together was developed with Tramore Educate Together school, and there are 3 schools in Waterford doing it this term. We are proud to be sponsoring one of the schools this term, while parents are paying at the other two (€8 per week per child). Feedback from parents, children and teachers is phenomenal. Research on the pilot that GIY did in the spring was that 90% of parents wanted the programme to continue, and that it helped their children develop a better understanding of and interest in food.
At the moment Eat Together is limited to a small number of local schools near GROW HQ (in the Waterford region), but it would be great to see it done on a bigger scale. With that in mind, GIY are “looking for like-minded restaurants, cafes, cookery schools, catering companies etc, who could take it up and run it in their own area. There’s a bit of work involved obviously, but we have all the resources available to help. Longer term, the hope would be that if we get a bit of a momentum behind it, there might be potential for a national programme, perhaps funded by the Department of Education. That would be a significant step towards putting food at the centre of education each day.”
We think it’s a very worthwhile project and look forward to seeing how GIY will go forward with it!