A four-week community cooking course at Pāpāmoa College is helping students and their parents or caregivers gain confidence in the kitchen while spending quality time together.

The free evening classes, organised by Pāpāmoa Food Hub in partnership with Pāpāmoa College, have run in Terms 1 and 2.

A third programme begins August 5 in Term 3, with student participants learning practical cooking skills, meal planning, budgeting, nutrition and food safety.

Volunteer tutor Tracey Killalea said her passion for cooking and helping others inspired her to become involved with the programme.

“I wanted to teach people simple ways of making food go further and create cost-effective meals,” she said. “But what we’ve found is that families are also coming along because they want to connect with their kids.”

Among Term 2 participants were Pāpāmoa College students Shelby Mills, 15, and Alyssa Mills, 12, who completed the course alongside their mother, Aileen Mills.

The family won the programme’s Pak’nSave Celebration Cook Off after preparing a chicken poke bowl. As well as winning the major prize of an electric wok from The Warehouse Pāpāmoa, the Mills received a Pāpāmoa Food Hub $350 food parcel voucher. Each participating group received a kitchen-related prize from The Warehouse Pāpāmoa.

Aileen Mills said she enrolled her daughters because she wanted them to become more confident in the kitchen.

“It was also a really nice bonding thing. There are lots of activities where you drop your children off, but not many where you actually do it alongside them.”

Alyssa Mills, 12, Aileen Mills and Shelby Mills, 15, with their winning chicken poke bowls.

Each weekly session ran from 6pm to 8pm in the college’s food technology classrooms.

Tutors first demonstrated the recipe before six participating families prepared the same meal at their own workstations, learning knife skills, food preparation, cooking techniques and recipe reading.

Participants took their completed meals home, while quizzes and practical activities reinforced what they had learned.

Killalea said every family came with different goals.

“We had all sorts of groups. There was a father and son who both had no idea about cooking, while some families were already quite confident. Others simply wanted to spend time together.”

For the final cook-off, each family received a $25 Pak’nSave voucher and challenged to plan, shop for and prepare a meal within budget, with students taking the lead in the cooking.

Mills said the course had changed life at home. “It’s now, ‘Is it my turn to cook?’ They come to me for questions now. They’re much more confident and comfortable in the kitchen and much happier to help out.”

She said the programme had been a positive experience for the whole family.

“When I told them it was over they said, ‘Oh’. They’d really enjoyed it and would have happily kept going.”

Pāpāmoa Food Hub manager Bruce Banks said the programme grew out of community cooking classes held in 2025 and was redesigned to involve parents and students learning together.

“We wanted to focus on parent/student classes going forward,” Banks said.

He hopes participants leave with new cooking skills, a better understanding of nutrition and seasonal cooking, smarter shopping habits, family-friendly meal ideas and stronger family connections.

“Cash donations to the hub for food support are not used to fund the cooking classes. These are funded from other sources.”

The Mills family prepared chicken poke bowls for their final night at the Papamoa College community cooking class.

Pāpāmoa College principal Iva Ropati said the initiative had received a strong response from families.

“We have seen a huge response to the cooking classes. It is nice to give parents and caregivers the tools to cook both healthy and affordable meals, particularly in tough economic times.”

He said the partnership reflected the school’s commitment to working alongside its community.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for us as a kura [school] to demonstrate how genuine and authentic partnership between school and community can work in practice.”

Ropati said learning together also strengthened family relationships and helped pass practical skills on to younger generations.

“In a time where there does seem to be an absence, rightly or wrongly, of adults actively participating in the family unit, doing things together strengthens whānau relationships. It also helps to break cycles where skills are not always passed down to younger members of the family.”

Pāpāmoa Food Hub was established in 2024 following the closure of Pāpāmoa Anglican Family Services. Alongside providing food and care parcels, it aims to build long-term food resilience through practical education.

The cooking classes are supported by Pak’nSave, which provides the cook-off grocery vouchers, while volunteers from Pāpāmoa Food Hub prepare and run the sessions.