RELATED: Bendigo children going hungry
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RELATED: Call-to-arms on poverty
RELATED: 'Working poor' can't afford food
A GROUP of Lightning Reef Primary School parents are chopping, frying and instructing.
Next to them, on the sizeable, modern benches are recipes for meals with the per-serve-cost, nutritional value and instructions.
They're at a weekly cooking class run by community liason officer Rosie Baxter, who started the initiative as a way of engaging parents with the school community.
Foodshare supplies food for the classes.
Ms Baxter said many of the school's families were leading very isolated lives, with limited social connections or support.
"Last term we had a mum who was eight and a half weeks pregnant," Ms Baxter says.
"She had no one to go with her to give birth.
"After coming to the cooking classes she had four other parents, and me, to come with her."
Indeed, poverty and disadvantage are deeply entrenched in the school community.
Data reveals 90 per cent of families receive the Educational Maintenance Allowance, reserved for people with Centrelink cards.
Ms Baxter said the vast majority of parents were unemployed.
"Most of our families are vulnerable families," she said.
"We have parents here who are facing fifth-generation poverty. It's a big thing."
But Ms Baxter said the cooking class was making a big difference to people's confidence.
"The first week they find it very difficult to come; they're shy, they don't know anybody," she said.
"But by the end of the six-week program they're a group, they have strong bonds. So it's not about the cooking, it's about the socialising."
Mother Leah Climas, whose daughter Kendra attends the school, said the classes had inspired her to get involved in the community.
"I've never been to anything with big amounts of people or anything involving the school or kindergarten," she said.
"After completing the classes in term one I now help run it and that's a big step up ... I also do the breakfast club and that's something I would never have thought to do ... it's great."
Jodie Stirling said she loved meeting the other parents.
"I'm a single mum with a tiny girl so it's amazing just to be able to get out at all," she said.
"It's good to get the mums together; we have so much in common, it's unbelievable."
Ms Baxter said while the social bonds formed by the class were the main objectives, learning to cook was a valuable skill and new experience for many of the parents.
"Simple things like chopping an onion - I have parents who don't know how to do that," she said.
"If somebody doesn't show you how to do something, how do you do it?
"A lot of people judge them but we don't know what it's like to be in their shoes.
"They're stuck; they're stuck in this place."
She said by learning to cook parents could better balance their tight budgets and ensure their children were eating healthy meals.
She said it was also an activity parents could bond over with their children, who often attended classes with them.
Michael Johns said he enjoyed attending the classes with sons Xavier, 6 and Makai, 7.
“It’s pretty handy, especially from the budget side of things, especially for people who are strapped for cash," he said.
"All of it's pretty healthy, which is a plus."
When asked what he enjoyed most about the classes, Mr Johns chuckled.
“Probably the fact you don’t have to cook on a Tuesday night,” he said. “No dishes!”
