Jamie Oliver. Pic: Wikimedia commons

Tower Hamlets council has teamed up with Jamie Oliver to help improve parents’ skills in the kitchen.

The aim is to train parents to deliver cooking courses to other parents, as part of Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food campaign.

The partnership was formally launched during the council’s annual parenting conference on March 11. Jamie Oliver said in a recorded message: “This is going to be fantastic, this is a brilliant course for the parents and I think you are going to love it.”

The campaign was set up by Oliver, in a bid to tackle a perceived decline in cooking skills, and to help people have more balanced diets.

“This is about local people teaching local people how to cook, how to budget, how to cook nutritious, healthy, affordable food and it’s all really parent-focused. So we are looking after the kids with the Kitchen Garden project and now we are looking after the parents,” said Oliver.

The Kitchen Garden project helps children to get a better understanding of where food comes from and how to develop their cooking skills. St. Paul’s primary school in Whitechapel have been running the scheme for the last two years.

Tower Hamlets Mayor, Lutfur Rahman, has expressed his excitement over the project and is happy to have established a partnership with the world famous chef.

“To have a chef of his caliber helping to improve the health of families in Tower Hamlets is something the whole borough can be proud of,” he said.

The Ministry of Food will train 14 parents in Tower Hamlets. They will then train other parents by running cooking programmes in local schools and community centres.