With the right skills, eating healthy can be affordable and delicious. Share your skills and your strength with families living on tight budgets.
While 85% of families living on a tight budget see healthy eating as important, only about half are able to prepare nutritious meals most nights of the week. Food skills taught in Cooking Matters, like smart shopping, meal planning and healthy cooking, can help make healthy eating a daily reality.
What You Can Expect
As a Cooking Matters volunteer, you’ll:
- Connect with a network of peers who share your passion for healthy food and community service
- Share your expertise in hands-on settings - the kitchen and the grocery store.
- Learn from the incredible families who participate in Cooking Matters.
- Draw from and contribute to a collection of chef-developed recipes which prove that healthy food can be delicious.
- Want to come back (98% of volunteers are willing to teach another course).
Cooking Matters at the Store Tour Leaders offer interactive, guided grocery store tours that help participants learn to make healthy purchasing choices on a limited budget. Using our guide and support resources, these leaders organize tours in their own communities – recruiting participants, choosing the tour location, and planning and leading the tour. Potential leaders might include registered dieticians and community nutritionists, culinary professionals, Cooperative Extension agents, and staff of community agencies who are interested in helping low-income families make the most of their food resources.
Cooking Matters Six-Week Cooking Course Instructors
- Culinary Instructors teach adults, kids, and teens how to cook and shop for healthy, low-cost foods. They combine their own knowledge and experience with the lesson plans and recipes provided in the Cooking Matters curricula. Culinary volunteers are usually either graduates of or enrolled in a two-year culinary training program or have at least two years working as a cook or chef.
- Nutrition Instructors teach adults, kids, and teens how to make healthy choices. They use the lesson plans and instructional materials provided in the Cooking Matters curricula, along with their own expertise. Nutrition volunteers are typically graduates of or enrolled in dietetics programs or have at least two years working in a nutrition or dietetics position.
Cooking Matters Six-Week Cooking Course Assistants help before, during and after classes. Duties may include shopping for food, handing out and collecting class materials, engaging reluctant participants, helping with set up and clean up, taking photos or collecting stories during class to help record the Cooking Matters course experience.
- Take the online volunteer training.
- Find and contact a Cooking Matters partner in your area.
- Visit the No Kid Hungry Action Center to find more volunteer opportunities in your area.