It’s Fooditude’s responsibility to become a sustainable caterer: we owe it to our community and planet. Our team’s commitment to change can be seen throughout the business, including community outreach.
In 2022, we introduced students to the world of work at Trinity Comprehensive School through BITC Ireland’s ‘World of Work’ programme. Sinead Moore, our executive chef, taught valuable hands-on cheffing skills to students through a series of workshops. Dean Kennet even got in the mix, talking about his transition from school to business to students. The hands-on work was rewarding; afterwards, we wanted to participate in more community sessions and be part of the national strategy to improve educational inclusivity.
BITC Ireland’s goal is to create an inclusive community where everyone can thrive. They do this by partnering with Irish companies like ours to help address educational issues within our community. Their impact improves retention in post-primary schools through business action programs such as the ‘World of Work’ project.
So what business community outreach have we done in 2023?
We’ve held three of five World of Work sessions for the students at Trinity Comprehensive to give their students insight into the working world, emphasising the importance of staying in education.
The Sessions
Our first session was introductory, allowing the students to get to know us and us to know them! With the help of BITC, we covered the outlines of each upcoming session, making sure they had opportunities to ask questions to better understand why we were there. By the end of it, the students were coming out of their shells and engaging with us.
Our cookery demo was next. We love this session as it includes everyone from our team: all our chefs, front of house and our drivers got involved! Picture a home economics class (now called Food & Nutrition): the students were split into groups between multiple countertop stations, donning chef attire, each with a Fooditude chef to dish out cooking instructions.
Then came the big one, the sustainability session. Focused on food waste, this session presented all the nitty gritty facts to students. Food waste is not only a major contributor to climate change but is a huge problem in Ireland particularly, where too many people are binning perfectly good ingredients. Our team summarised it all; from explaining the challenges of food waste to giving a demo on best practices to divide waste at home.
The best bit? We brought in some treats for the students made from typically discarded ingredients to illustrate the food potential of ingredients that are usually thrown away. The students loved the session and engaged in conversations on how to repurpose “classified food waste”.
Stay tuned for part two
With just two more sessions to go, we’re so excited to see what the students bring us next. It’s been a pleasure to collaborate with BITC and Trinity Comprehensive and it’s been heartwarming to hear about the impact these sessions have had! Here’s a quote we received from the Deputy Principal:
Our collaboration with Fooditude in Trinity Comprehensive has encouraged our students to reflect more about their food choices, the importance of sustainability, reducing waste and the different roles in a workplace environment. Students get the opportunity to learn about nutrition in the kitchen when preparing easy-to-cook nutritious meals. All students thoroughly enjoy the hands-on practical element of these sessions and are eager to share their new knowledge with us!
Fooditude gives our students a fantastic insight into the world of work and the many roles involved in the company. This begins conversations between our students about possible careers and the importance of staying in education.
Working closely with each other the team at Fooditude adapt to meet the needs of our students in a creative way and allow time to continue conversations after the sessions. One student from last year’s world of work session is now interested in pursuing a career in catering after being inspired by a talk during the daily life session.
Written by Safena Yvanovich
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