A company has been set up to help children create a love of nature, community, growing, cooking and eating in Little Blakenham.

Ben Hooper, Scarlett Dixon and Liz Neal, creators of Grow, Cook, Eat, are combining their knowledge of cooking, teaching, catering and parenting to help young people get excited about where their food comes from and the importance of caring about what they eat.

They are trying to raise funds so that they can offer more classes to children, and help with the set-up costs for their projects.

East Anglian Daily Times: Grow, Cook, Eat teaches young people how to grow and cook their own produce and helps them care about what they eat.Grow, Cook, Eat teaches young people how to grow and cook their own produce and helps them care about what they eat. (Image: Nick Ilott Photography)

Scarlett Dixon, one of the organisers, said: “Coming out of lockdown, we felt there was an opportunity to bring together certain things that we had all experienced over the last couple of years.

“Taking it back to basics feels like a great way to give young people more choice and understanding when it comes to what they eat.

“Hopefully kids will feel more confident and engaged in what we eat and what effect it has, both on us and the environment.”

Starting April 4, Grow, Cook, Eat will start doing the catering at Bealings Primary School, where it will provide healthy and nutritious meals using mostly organic and locally-sourced produce.

Mrs Dixon said: “The aim is that some ingredients will be grown by the children at the school. We are hoping that this will become a sustainable model that can be rolled out across Suffolk schools.”

They also have access to a covered field kitchen with growing beds, in the hope they can get children from local state schools to grow and cook their own produce. This is starting in the new school year in September.

East Anglian Daily Times: Grow, Cook, Eat are trying to raise funds so that they can offer more classes to children, and help with the set-up costs for their projects.Grow, Cook, Eat are trying to raise funds so that they can offer more classes to children, and help with the set-up costs for their projects. (Image: Nick Ilott Photography)

Mrs Dixon is hoping that Grow, Cook, Eat can provide something different for young people in Suffolk: “There are some amazing initiatives out there at the moment dedicated to getting people closer to nature, providing children with better food in schools and teaching children how to grow food.

“What we would like to do is offer a project which holds a number of these experiences under one umbrella.

“Whilst there are so many wonderful grassroots organisations in Suffolk, we thought there was room for one able to deliver its objectives via a variety of different projects."

If you would like to donate visit gofundme.