Harvest Festival for Flying Young Families
The Harvest Festival of Thanksgiving is a popular European autumn celebration. Last October 9, Project Leader Marina Coghill together with twelve volunteers used the Festival as a fun way to introduce the concept of healthy eating to the families of the Flying Young Program at the Caritas Community Center – Ngau Tau Kok. Together with a dietitian from the Hong Kong Eating Disorder Association (HKEAT), we hosted a workshop that provided helpful guidance to the parents, on what constitutes a healthy diet for children. HKEAT also offered several educational booth games which allowed the children to learn about different food types through play.
HKEAT dietitian Ms. Kelly Ho, shared helpful tips on how to eat healthily while eating out and how to prepare healthy and tasty child-friendly meals. Following the Workshop, our volunteers transformed the classroom into a learning kitchen for the children to practice cooking healthy, flavourful meals. Everyone quickly donned their chef hats and aprons to get into the spirit of things.
HKAOM volunteer and professional Chef, Russell Doctrove, demonstrated how to prepare healthy sandwiches, salads and desserts that included popular ingredients found in Chinese family kitchens such as soya sauce, sesame oil and minced ginger. The children and their parents thoroughly enjoyed their time cooking together, and once done, they carefully packed the sandwiches plus salad into paper lunch boxes to take home. One of the parents complimented the tastiness of the sandwiches. Another parent said, “The children had so much fun and we are so happy to be able to bring some meals home.”
Chef Russell said, “It was really enjoyable to see the kids and parents all having so much fun.”
