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Volunteer with Cooking Matters® Minnesota
Volunteer Position: Culinary Instructor
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Cooking Matters® is a cooking-based nutrition education course designed to teach low-income families how to prepare healthy, tasty meals on a limited budget. Volunteer culinary instructors and University of Minnesota Extension Nutrition Educators share their time and expertise to lead hands-on courses that teach adults, teens, and kids how to purchase and prepare nutritious foods in healthful, safe, and tasty ways. This can mean the difference between feeding families for just one night and making sure they have the knowledge, skills, and resources to prepare healthy meals for a lifetime. The culinary instructor will serve as a teacher and role model, teaching key skills and inspiring participants to cook more healthy, inexpensive meals at home.
Responsibilities
- Teach participants the basics of food and kitchen safety, food preparation, and making healthy choices when cooking, according to the highlighted objectives of each lesson.
- Facilitate class discussions on each cooking or food safety message, allowing participants to brainstorm how they might put new behaviors into action, discuss barriers to adopting new behaviors, and share ideas with their peers for overcoming barriers.
- Demonstrate key food safety, food budgeting, and food preparation lessons each week.
- Assign participants kitchen tasks that allow each individual to gain hands-on practice and improve their cooking skills.
- Supervise participants in the kitchen, encouraging proper techniques and gently correcting as needed.
Skills/Experience Preferred
- Professional culinary training or experience working in the food industry is preferred. We welcome qualified chefs from restaurants and hotels, instructors and students from culinary schools, personal chefs, caterers, home economics teachers, restaurant owners and managers, retired foodservice professionals, etc.
- Interest and comfort in working with low-income individuals from diverse backgrounds.
- Comfortable speaking in front of groups (average class size is 12 participants).
- Ability to travel to class location.
- Willingness to be trained on Cooking Matters® curricula, to work as a team with University of Minnesota Extension Nutrition Educator and classroom volunteers, and to adhere to program policies and team decisions.
Time Commitment
- Willingness to be trained on Cooking Matters® curricula, to work as a team with University of Minnesota Extension Nutrition Educator and classroom volunteers, and to adhere to program policies and team decisions.
- Approximately 3 hours per week for lesson preparation, travel time, class time, set-up and clean-up.
- Must commit to all six weeks of the course.
