Hearth and Home – a communal kitchen for a Village

www.transitionvillagewallan.com.au 

“Hearth and Home”, will use the funding from the Tucker Foundation to build a communal kitchen with dining room for the village residents. The kitchen is traditionally viewed as the heart of the home, where family and friends come together over food to reconnect, share food and tell the story of their day. For the TVW residents, once homeless, this has the power to build a sense of home and place and reconnection to their fellow residents. TVW offers an internal program of relearning skills of cooking healthy foods based on locally available fresh produce. (TVW has developed a Productive Gardens Program based on Permaculture systems which will, when established, provide a percentage of the residents’ needs). The kitchen will offer one cooking space for every 2 residents, allowing people the opportunity to experiment with cooking and share the results to the other residents while being responsible for their own kitchen area. A bulk food storage area will be built as well as individual cupboards. FoodXchange will educate the residents about bulk food buying, handling of bulk foods and ‘Friends of the Village’ volunteers will be available to teach cooking skills and food budgeting. The dining area of the unit will consist of a community dining table to offer the time and opportunity for all residents to meet and converse. Funding ($3500) has been received to equip the kitchen area, the missing link is the building itself.