Celebrating our teams...Gillian Cowburn, Volunteer Cook for Kendal Lunch Bunch

There are a variety of roles across BHCP and other organisations we work with in the community. Here we shine the spotlight on the people who carry out a range of roles to keep our communities healthy and supported.

Gillian Cowburn is a volunteer cook for Kendal Lunch Bunch. When she retired, Gillian helped to found Kendal People’s Café with friend Helen Pateman before being approached by Kendal Integrated Care Community (ICC) to support the lunch bunch club in an effort to combat loneliness and offer people the opportunity to have a hot, nutritious, homecooked meal.

Kendal lunch Bunch has been running since Sept 2019 when face-to-face sessions were started at Kendal Parish Church. Sadly, these had to be paused because of covid. However, volunteers continued to cook meals which were delivered to lunch bunchers in their own homes. Face-to-face sessions were resumed in February this year.

Here Gillian tells us more. 

What experience did you need to obtain your role?

I started volunteering about five years ago after retiring. I was a journalist for 40 years and a food writer.

My friend Helen Pateman had heard about the People’s Café in Lancaster and we talked about doing something similar to help the community in Kendal as we both love to cook. Kendal People’s Café served its first customers in March 2017 and has prepared thousands of meals using food which would otherwise have been thrown away. The café asks that local people pay as they can/pay what they feel.

Kendal ICC got in touch with us and asked if we could cook meals for the elderly community on Christmas Day and snowballed from there and we started fortnightly face-to-face sessions for Kendal Lunch Bunch.

Kendal People’s Café and Kendal Lunch Bunch sit under Waste into Wellbeing South Lakes Action on Climate Change Towards Transition.

What does your role involve?

I work with a lovely bunch of ladies who all volunteer their time to support lunch bunch. Pauline Hutchinson, Kate Tordoff and I are the three lead cooks and among our volunteer helpers are Krystyna Slosarska and Barbara Bonsall. From Kendal ICC we work with Alison Nicholson, Trudy Brayshaw, Natalie Chapple and Jenny Barsby. We are always looking for more cooks and volunteers to be able to deliver more sessions.

We currently cook for around 12 people but are looking to extend this to 16 people. We also cook and deliver meals to anyone who cannot attend because they are unwell.

We work with a lot of local organisations to deliver the service, including Kendal People’s Café, Waste into Wellbeing, Cornvale Fine Foods, Booths, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s. We work closely with the logistics coordinator for Waste into Wellbeing to help coordinate the food we need.

What have been the best bits and challenges of your role?
We hold the lunch bunch club at Kendal Parish Church and cook the meals in the kitchen there. People that attend can sit around and engage with the cooks while we are cooking and serving which is lovely and gives it such a family feel.

We had to pause face-to-face sessions due to the Covid pandemic but during this time some of the volunteers from Kendal Lunch Bunch and Kendal People’s Café delivered delivered meals to some of our lunch bunchers and even visited them in costume on Victory in Europe (VE) Day.

Covid confinement and isolation have been very cruel and it’s awful how the pandemic has affected people.restarted face-to-face sessions in February this year as a trial and it was so heart-warming seeing all of our lunch bunchers getting back together for the first time since the pandemic hit.

As a cook, there can be challenges if there are dietary requirements. Some of our lunch bunchers are gluten-free, lactose-free, wheat-free and vegetarian so you need to plan your meals carefully and be creative.

Top tips for people wanting to become a Volunteer: 

Think of something you would like to do and share with other people.

For example, if you like to be out in the car you could be a volunteer transport driver for someone in need. In my case, I love to cook which is why I get such enjoyment in cooking. Food brings so much pleasure to people.

How can I find out more? 

⦁    If you would like to volunteer visit https://slacc.org.uk/ and follow the how to volunteer links.

A PDF version of the case study can be found here.