The dynamic Eileen Hatcher currently volunteers at Recipe House as a helper in the Recipe for Success offices. Eileen began volunteering with us as a classroom and gardening volunteer, and later brought her generosity and enthusiasm for our mission to our office to lend a hand to our staff members. We asked Eileen a few questions about her experiences as a volunteer.
What sparked your interest to volunteer with Recipe for Success?
Eileen Hatcher: I've been eating food all my life, cooking most of it and growing some of it for a good while, too, so it seemed that my skill set matched nicely with the Recipe for Success mission and activities. At a Houston Urban Gardeners meeting, the Recipe for Success instructor at my local elementary school explained how the program helps kids learn to garden, cook and eat healthy foods. As soon as the meeting was over, I walked up and signed up. As a vegetarian, I was excited that recipes with no or less meat were used in the kitchen.
What keeps you coming back week after week? What are your favorite things to do or experience when you are volunteering?
EH: The children in my neighborhood need much more positive interactions with each other and adults. The spirit in the kitchen and garden was always gentle and supportive. I loved the children's responses to seeing things grow. I loved hearing them toss around science and foreign (cooking) words that they had never heard before. I loved that they would warn each other not to step on the earthworms in the garden. Molding appropriate social behavior and interactions was perhaps a secondary, even unintended, outcome of the Recipe for Success curriculum, but it may have been as important as the modeling of good health practices
How does volunteering enhance your life?
EH: Volunteering with Recipe for Success in my local elementary school made me appreciate my upbringing in a family that gardened and was too poor (or cheap) to buy processed foods. (Bet my mom never thought she'd hear me say that!) I now realize how difficult it can be to support healthy eating in a single parent household and that working parents need help and resources for how to make meal-prep and mealtime a participatory family event.
Do you have a favorite memory / story thus far? Could just be an observation or a specific moment in time.
EH: Sharing home-grown and home-cooked food ties us to culture and community. What is served and how it's cooked is all part of your history and sharing it confirms your belief in the future. As Houston becomes more diverse, sharing these recipes and dishes help us appreciate each other's (and our own) cultures and understand each other better. Everyone's granny or mom used to eat in season, cook family recipes and tell the stories about family and location.
For a stir-fry cooking lesson, the local Pei Wei donated 100 chopsticks to Recipe for Success to enhance the lesson. The kids were so excited to not only cook, but also learn how to use chopsticks and explore another culture. In the garden, the children learned how to make seed balls of wildflower seeds and clay to increase germination and viability.
It's Recipe for Success' 10th Birthday: where would you like to see the organization in another 10 years?
EH: In 10 years, I would hope that gardening and healthy eating would be a part of every school's curriculum; but knowing that is fairly improbable, I see a need for some existing seed-to-plate programs to expand and serve more grades. I would like to see additional classes using ethnic recipes as the basis for encouraging healthy eating. I would like to see the continuation of meatless meal preparation, even more instruction on healthy shopping and attention to ingredients in off-the-shelf cooking products and identification of genetically modified ingredients. I would also like to see Recipe for Success supporting family potluck dinners in the schools and the community.
[Note: Recipe for Success has extensive curriculum available that teaches children how to read labels and make good decisions when purchasing prepared foods. These real-world shopping lessons are embedded in our free farmers marKIDS curriculum and Eat This! Summer Camp. ]
Thank you Eileen for volunteering with Recipe for Success! To inquire about volunteering opportunities, email our Volunteer Coordinator.
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