Get Dorset Cooking

Training, support and cooking kits for community groups

We believe that everyone should be able to enjoy tasty, healthy and affordable meals.  Get Dorset Cooking is the Friendly Food Club’s community campaign and training programme to make cooking sessions and equipment available to even more people through new forms of community partnership.

The programme includes:

Provider Programme!

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Community cooking leader training

If you’d like to host community cooking sessions, we’ll help you get ready. Our comprehensive community cooking leader training is an intensive one-day course that uses the COM-B model of behaviour change to help aspiring leaders to explore how to build capability, opportunities and motivation to cook.

You'll build your knowledge and understanding of all the issues you’ll need to consider, from who you would like to support to the practicalities of hosting and delivery, promotion, food safety, health and safety and volunteer management.

You'll finish the day inspired, focused and more confident, with your own unique action plan ready to put into action. Includes a detailed leader’s pack and templates.

"I will go away form today with the motivation to help young peopple develop life skills using cooking as a catalyst."

"I have definnitely increased my confidence and I'm excited about running cooking sessions in the near future."

This training is fully funded if you are attending representing a community, voluntary or state organisation in the Dorset Council area, with the intention to run cooking sessions through the group. 

If you are an individual, there will be a charge of £175.

Volunteer training

We provide online training for community cooking volunteers, based on our own volunteer induction and training. Participants learn about the many ways volunteers can help, how they can benefit as a volunteer, and the important things they need to know around food hygiene, health and safety, safeguarding, data protection and more.

We’ve developed and provided eleven community cooking kits that include everything a group needs to host small group community cooking sessions, from induction hobs to measuring spoons. These are held in community locations across Dorset and are available for community-based groups in Dorset or BCP to hire for free. Click to find your nearest kit and contact the host organisation.,

Get Dorset Cooking events

Details coming soon

Community Resources

We make our community cooking leader templates free for any community group to use. Please contact us to request access.  If you have attended the training day, you will have been sent access details.

(Please note that the complete community cookery leader’s pack is only available to community cookery leader training participants.)

Course materials - access for course participants

 Recipes

Click here