For five years the Rotary Club of Rutherford Telarah has leased school canteens and helped fund breakfasts both providing protein rich foodfor growing children.
As you know the cost of food has skyrocketed in recent months and in order to maintain costs of the food prepared in the canteens, the Rotary Club needs financial assistance to continue to provide good food at prices our school families can afford. Can you help?
Once school canteens were run by volunteers, today those volunteers are working to support the family unit. Rotary identified this problem and leased the canteens, employed local people who run and prepare the healthy food we serve to the children. The canteens have run well and been able to stay financially viable.
As you know, costs of food and wages have increased, the immediate reaction would be to increase prices or reduce staff, but we know that will deny good food to many of our young students, so we are asking for financial assistance so good healthy food can continue to be served at reasonable prices to our local children. Can you help us continue to support this Rotary canteen initiative.
Rotary now employs trained canteen supervisors and casual staff to run the canteens providing that healthy menu stacked full of the proteins necessary to make young brains grow.
Catering Maitland Ltd, a company set up by the Rotary Club of Rutherford Telarah to support the school canteens now leased and operated.
School canteens historically were run by P&C volunteers. P&C’s like many service clubs have discovered that it is hard to find volunteers especially those with the time to undertake the responsibilities of running school canteens.
Rotary too recognised that volunteers are hard to find and made the decision to open our first school canteen staffed by trained employees. That was a success for the school, the employees and the project met the Rotary ideals and vision. One of those employees was trained in Hospitality 3.
From the success of the first canteen the Rotary Club now leases five canteens from the Department of Education, all school canteens in the Maitland LGA. There are 12 local women now employed and five schools have their canteens open five days a week. The canteens are required to serve healthy food with the menu approved by the NSW Health Dept. The canteen staff cook and prepare all meals in the canteen from local fresh produce where possible.
The canteens subscribe to the online ordering facility, Flexischools, allowing parents to order and pay for their children’s school food online. While this is very convenient the canteens still accept cash for over-the-counter sales.
Rotary recognises the need for hungry children to be fed and through the canteens the Club can provide breakfast for children who do not receive breakfast at home. The program Rotary calls ‘Food for Thought’ and this ensures that all children in need in schools accepting this program receive a free breakfast. Almost 300 children receive breakfast each school day.
The Rotary Club through Catering Maitland Ltd aims to maintain prices on the approved menu at affordable prices. This is difficult currently with the cost of food increasing every week, the way we all see.
We have reached the point when we need to ask for regular donations to help feed the children. Can you please assist by donating here….
