Tommys Community Kitchen & Cookery School

Aim: Help us turn our Tea Room into a Community Kitchen and Cookery School

Help us secure our Community Kitchen so we can provide meals to households locally who need support with food.

Our new community kitchen will be a space where people can come together to cook and share delicious nutritious meals and access cooked meals to take home. Helping to combat social isolation and loneliness. 

Individuals and families in our community face many challenges. 

Challenging circumstances include being made suddenly redundant and having no savings. Waiting for benefits to start, which is often delayed. Living in temporary accommodation without proper cooking facilities. Facing serious mental health crisis. Recovering from trauma such as abuse or an accident or sudden chronic health issue. Living in working poverty where their wages are less than benefit levels. Having severe learning and support needs. Being elderly and disabled. Or are a family or single person household living in long term poverty. 

 Community kitchens create a sense of belonging and support empowering individuals by equipping them with essential food skills and resources needed to make healthy choices. 

The kitchen will benefit individuals, families and communities in West Sussex enabling them access to better quality culturally diverse food. We are combating food insecurities and social isolation. 

We will support our community by  

Running Community Cookery Classes: Where people learn how to cook affordable nutritious meals, eating together bringing joy and a sense of belonging. 

Hosting Communal Meal Social Events: Provide regular communal meal events to encourage social interaction, bringing people together and building friendship. So many people feel isolated and alone in our community. Our regular community meals give people something to look forward too.

Setting Up a Meals Distribution Service: Nutritious ready meals cooked by our team using good quality surplus food available to those in our community that need them. Working locally with other organisations like SAHAH (Support At Home After Hospital) 

Set Up After School and Youth Clubs - Where young people can learn to cook together and eat together. 

Host a Community Christmas Lunch on Christmas Day for those who are alone at Christmas 

Set Up Our Work Experience Programme - Introduction to Catering & Hospitality 

Our work experience programme aims to teach basic catering skills, to Neurodivergent young people (working with local colleges) young people whom are home schooled and young people with other barriers to work enabling them to have better job prospects in the future, they will work towards gaining their food safety and hygiene certificates as well as learning barista skills from an local accredited provider. 

We also plan to grow our bakery to sustain our Community Kitchen and provide job opportunities for our students, focusing on ability not disability. 

Our service is more than a meal. It's care. It's connection. It's community.    

Our mission is at the heart of what we do BUT a community kitchen needs the support of the community to thrive! In the current climate funding and grants are getting harder to compete for there's even a waiting list for new community groups to access surplus food. 

Local community kitchens are needed now more than ever.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 10th August 2025 at 11:04am