The winner of our 2024 NASS Innovation Award was Aurora Hanley School in Stoke-on-Trent for their brilliant children’s community cooking project. The school, which supports young people, many with autism and high levels of anxiety, created this initiative to deliver a meaningful curriculum while increasing students' awareness of sustainability and community issues.
Using surplus food from local supermarkets, pupils have cooked and delivered over 300 meals to local families in need. Through this, they have gained practical skills, built resilience, and developed a sense of purpose. The project has also supported careers education by helping pupils work in unfamiliar settings and engage with their community.
Aurora Hanley's Headteacher, Julie Martin, explains more about the project and the impact it is having on students and the local community.
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At Aurora Hanley School the majority of our young people have a diagnosis of autism, whilst many also experience high levels of anxiety. Our school purpose is ‘Empowering uniqueness, realising potential, building resilience’.
In order to deliver a meaningful curriculum, we constantly seek out opportunities to link in a meaningful way with our local community, and to build on the opportunities we offer for students to develop social skills and confidence within the wider world.
Our school is in an area of high deprivation (Stoke is the 25th most income deprived area of 316 in England). As a school, we are working towards making students more aware of sustainability and community issues.
We have developed a project through links to a local church to collect waste food (vegetables/fruit) from local supermarkets. The food from the supermarket is all perfectly safe to eat – it’s just past its official sell by date.
Our pupils use this in their cooking lessons to make nutritious meals for local people in need.
We are incredibly proud to say we provided 31 meals in the first 2 weeks to families in need locally and have now provided over 300 meals!
We are incredibly proud of the impact our young people are having in our local community. Pupils are highly motivated by the idea that they are helping people in genuine need. They were horrified to hear some people couldn't afford to eat properly every day, and were keen to get involved.
We track the development of cooking skills in our young people, working towards making dishes with increasing independence to prepare for an independent life, learning about hygiene, health and safety, healthy eating, nutrition, and budgeting.
Students have been involved at every stage, for example, helping to design the logo for the project. The project has helped them gain a new enthusiasm for their food technology lessons as there is a real and genuine reason for making the meals. Students apply reading skills through following recipes and reading feedback from families. They apply maths skills through weighing and measuring ingredients, counting the meals produced and working out quantities. The food is all labelled with safety, storage and cooking information and is tailored to meet the needs of any food allergies or dietary requirements for the family.
Pupils are gaining real-life experience of positive community action, at a time when so many young people are struggling with climate anxiety. It is helping to give them a positive sense of purpose to combat this and a real sense of efficacy.
The project has built pupils’ resilience in using different facilities within the community and working in an unfamiliar setting whilst also linking to careers education.
This project sits within a much wider curricular framework to support our young people with ASD / SEN/ high anxiety to build the skills and confidence to move on to meaningful next steps.
The students love cooking for families. Their response has been so positive and supportive. One said: “I am enjoying cooking for other children who may not eat a healthy hot meal.”
The families have given lovely feedback to the school. One said: “We can’t believe we had such beautiful food delivered to our door.”
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If you would like to read about the other finalists and winners in our 2024 NASS Awards, please visit: https://www.nasschools.org.uk/congratulations-to-our-2024-nass-award-winners/