SPAIN: Kitchen project trains, feeds families
Community kitchen effort includes healthy eating workshops
SPAIN
(MissionNewswire) Don Bosco Foundation will manage a community kitchen at the La Foggara Community Social Services Center in the Poniente Norte area of Córdoba, Spain. The kitchen will train and feed 30 families from the Las Palmeras neighborhood. The families will attend training three days per week where they will cook menus to feed 120 people.
At an opening event, José María Bellido, mayor of Córdoba, recalled that the project faced years of ups and downs to become reality. The project was financed with European funds for regional development, and its implementation is the result of the sum of many efforts, including those of the residents and administrative institutions.
CaixaBank, a Spanish credit institution, contributed funds to purchase food that will be cooked from now through the end of December. Dr. Gerardo Cuartero, commercial director of CaixaBank for Eastern Andalusia, said that he was pleased to make this project possible. He noted, “We will work with the participants two days a week through various other workshops, so that they can develop their personal skills and abilities and have a future with greater opportunities.”
The opening event for the kitchen featured Chef Ferran Adriá, an ambassador of CaixaBank. He said, “These projects are extremely important, and it is necessary to be pragmatic and objective. I believe that public-private projects are the ones that really work. Cooking, as a sector, is very important in economic terms, health, culture and as a social commitment.” Adriá stressed that cooking is as important as food and raw materials are for feeding the population.
The community kitchen will also involve professionals from the Spanish IMIBIC Research Institute to provide healthy eating workshops and help design the menus.
Salesian missionaries in Spain provide primary and secondary educational as well as vocational and technical school to ensure youth acquire employment skills for the futures. Salesians also work to meet the basic needs of those in poverty and offer workforce development opportunities to ensure an easier school to work transition.
Close to 32% of young Spanish workers under the age of 25 are unemployed and a growing number of them can’t afford to buy enough food to live. Poor youth with few employable skills struggle the most to find and retain stable employment. Women in Spain face inequality in the workforce. They earn up to 14% less than men and represent only 34.5% of those listed as the highest earners in Spain.
###
Sources:
ANS Photo (usage permissions and guidelines must be requested from ANS)
Salesian Missions – Spain
World Bank – Spain
