An Ellesmere Port based project is in line to win up to £5,000 worth of kitchen kit.
Bridge Community Farms, which offers the long-term unemployed permanent and sustainable jobs through growing and selling produce to the local community, has been shortlisted in the first Stoves Community Kitchens campaign.
The £20,000 Community Kitchens fund set up by the British cooking brand is aimed at placing the kitchen at the heart of local communities and helping projects to transform their kitchen facilities.
The first wave of applications saw 230 nominations flood in from across the country with the working farm gaining a top 11 shortlisted spot.
Its latest project, Fab Families Food Hub, will provide volunteer opportunities and work experience in catering and cooking for young people with learning difficulties and mental health issues.
The farm is now working to create a community kitchen and café to get the hub off the ground.
Jonathan Casley, managing director of Stoves’ parent company Glen Dimplex Home Appliances, said: “Preparing and sharing food brings people together so a kitchen is often an important part of a community space however, they can be expensive to set up and maintain.
“Community Kitchens was designed to help these projects and we were overwhelmed with excellent entries. This campaign highlights just how much amazing community-based work goes on to help vulnerable, marginalised and less-well off groups of people across the UK.
“Reading all those applications to select the shortlist was really difficult and we hope everyone will now get behind them to vote. We are also looking forward to re-opening nominations later in the year to see who we can help next time around.”
At the farm director Francis Ball said: “We are so pleased to have made it down to the final 11 in the Stoves Community Kitchen competition.
“Over recent weeks we have been delighted to welcome local primary schools onto the farm to learn about horticulture and food production and, if we are lucky enough to win, there is so much more we can do with better kitchen equipment.
Our Fab Family Food Project will teach cooking skills to young people and their families so please go on to Facebook to vote for us, we could do so much good with this prize.”
The public vote, through the Stoves Facebook page, is open until Sunday October 18. Prize packages worth between £2,000 and £5,000 will then be awarded to the winning projects.
