Homes repairs partners encourage young Notting Hill residents to cook up a treat

Young people from Notting Hill have demonstrated nerves of stainless steel when cooking up a treat for a tough panel of judges as they participated in a culinary challenge aimed at encouraging healthy eating.

Connaught Partnerships Ltd and Notting Hill Housing Trust, who are working in partnership to deliver reactive repairs to properties in the area, invited local young people to participate in a cookery competition for which all equipment and ingredients were provided. The event, based on the BBC series Masterchef, was held at Teck Close Community Centre to help encourage youngsters from the Notting Hill area to develop their cookery skills as part of a healthy diet.

Bridgett Kroemer, Connaught customer experience coordinator, explained: “At Connaught we feel it is important to make it as easy as possible for young people to try new things and learning to cook is not only an invaluable skill, but also an important part of a healthy lifestyle.

“We wanted to provide something positive that would focus attention on young people’s abilities and as such we distributed flyers around the area to gauge local interest in a cookery challenge. We were overwhelmed with the response and with a maximum of 10 entrants permitted we unfortunately had to allocate places on a first come first served basis.”

The event was held over three sessions with judges eliminating the young chefs until just three remained for the final round, to which parents were invited to attend. The selection of an overall winner was an extremely tough decision but eventually the judges from Connaught and Notting Hill Housing Trust declared 15 year old Chloe Joseph as the culinary queen of Teck Close for which she was presented with a first prize of a new bike, donated by partner organisation Aaron Services. All participants received a Jamie Oliver cook book courtesy of Notting Hill Housing Trust.

Bridgett concluded: “The culinary challenge has proved to be a great success and we are hoping to host the event with Notting Hill again in the summer in order to give those who missed out this time a chance to participate. We are hopeful that the event will encourage young people to take an interest in cooking and healthy eating then we will be delighted and even more so if this rubs-off on other members of their family.”

Tania Moore, Notting Hill’s Community Development Project Manager – Young People said, “It was great to work in partnership with Connaught to bring young people in the community together for this project.

“The young people who participated were really enthusiastic and had loads of fun. The competition allowed them to learn about nutrition, gain valuable cooking skills and ended with a grand final that was hotly contested.

“We are looking forward to hosting Young Masterchef again with Connaught later this year.”

Notting Hill Housing Trust and Connaught Partnerships Ltd are working in partnership to deliver reactive repairs to 10,000 properties as part of a 5 year contract.