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Among unemployed New York City residents, 58% experienced difficulty affording food throughout 2009.(Food Bank for New York City)
Staten Island
Project Hospitality, a private not-for-profit organization based in Staten Island, New York, provides comprehensive services for hungry and homeless and inadequately housed people, especially those who are living with multiple diagnoses such as HIV, substance use, and/or mental illness.
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Cooking for Healthy Communities
Cooking for Healthy Communities, a collaboration between UNH and The Children’s Aid Society, is training cooks from UNH member agencies in nutrition and healthy meal preparation, focusing on cooking with fresh, whole ingredients. Thirty programs from 17 settlement houses participated in the first training program, including cooks from senior centers, child care centers, homeless shelters, and HIV/AIDS service programs. By helping cooks to prepare healthier meals, the project has built community capacity to prevent diet-related diseases in City neighborhoods at greatest risk.
Participants received 24 hours of training in technical food preparation and nutrition information with a focus on disease prevention, ongoing technical assistance, and support in planning and implementing community nutrition education activities. The pilot year was funded by grants from The New York State Health Foundation and the Communities IMPACT Diabetes Center.
Who eats at Settlement Houses?
- Kids whose working parents participate in child care, afterschool, and summer camps at settlement houses. Many programs provide breakfast, lunch and dinner to kids on a daily basis.
- Older Adults who participate in their local settlement house senior center, eating a healthy lunch with their friends on a daily basis. Many older adults who are homebound also receive hand-delivered hot meals several days a week.
- Families who may be living in homeless shelters temporarily. These families are in transition and healthy food is important to help children and their parents remain stable as they move on to self-sufficiency.
- People with HIV/AIDS who may be living in special housing to support their medical needs.
ARAMARK Chef Mentors
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ARAMARK , a longtime corporate partner of UNH, is providing Chef Mentors to help support and strengthen the implementation of healthy meal preparation learned at the Cooks Training. ARAMARK Building Community is a company-wide signature philanthropic and employee volunteer program dedicated to enriching the lives of families by partnering with local community centers to help people learn, earn and thrive.
"Aramark understands that communities are stabilized and people are best helped at the local level; we in New York City couldn’t be more pleased to be working with a company that has such an important and real vision about how to make an impact.”
– Nancy Wackstein, UNH Executive Director
Latest News
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
They soon may be sneaking cauliflower into the mashed potatoes and making barbecue sauce from scratch at city shelters, day cares and senior centers. Dozens of cooks began nutrition classes and hands-on training last week at a Long Island City industrial kitchen.
"When you use fresh ingredients, it's more exciting to work with," said John Graves, 61, who has cooked for kids at Mosholu Montefiore Community Center for decades. He said he gets bored making the same recipes over and over again on a four-week cycle - and wants the kids at his center to learn how to eat better.
"I sit at home and watch the cooking channels to get ideas," he said. "My focus is on the younger ones. You can get them to eat more vegetables and things like that and then by the time they're five, they're not afraid of broccoli." The program, called Cooking for Healthy Communities, was developed by United Neighborhood Houses and will eventually extend to hundreds of cooks.
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