WELLfed vision is that ‘Everyone has choices, skills and resources for living well'. Participants learn how to plan, shop, safely prepare and cook low-cost healthy meals, with a strong focus on seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables. WELLfed has been co-designed with the local community, to make the classes accessible and to ensure that the recipes and classes make a real difference. Our programme de
livers a series of interactive cooking classes, held weekly in the communities that need it most. WELLfed began with two local ladies, Kim and Rebecca, connecting with and listening to the stories of parents in the Porirua East community. The stories identified that many of these families lacked (or had minimal) basic cooking skills, recipes and kitchen equipment to prepare and make their own healthy meals and food at home. These parents were so keen and willing to learn new skills to be able to feed their families well, and have worked together as partners in developing this programme. The classes are fun, uplifting and relaxed and community resilience and connections are being grown. The very first WELLfed course started in August 2016 at Holy Family School in Cannons Creek, after a lot of planning and engaging with local individuals and organisations. In October 2017 a second daytime WELLfed class started at Corinna School in Waitangirua. During 2019 we moved into our HQ - an old bowling clubrooms - and commenced our third daytime class. WELLfed turned four in 2020, whilst we were deep in the response to COVID 19. So far more than 20,000 mouths have been feed by food made at WELLfed! WELLfed recipes have been approved by a Dietitian and are based around seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables. To date, the cost of running WELLfed has been covered by grant funding and generous support from community groups.
WELLfed has a fantastic group of amazing volunteers who have donated thousands of hours to establish and operate this program.
