“Cooking for Grahamstown’s little angels”, a high profile charity cook-off in aid of Kuyasa Special School, is the brain child of Teresa Searle whose son is a learner there. Scheduled for early in September, the event will feature a number of chefs competing against one another.
Each chef team will be given identical ingredients from which to make curry and rice which will be sold to the public after the winners are announced.
“Cooking for Grahamstown’s little angels”, a high profile charity cook-off in aid of Kuyasa Special School, is the brain child of Teresa Searle whose son is a learner there. Scheduled for early in September, the event will feature a number of chefs competing against one another.
Each chef team will be given identical ingredients from which to make curry and rice which will be sold to the public after the winners are announced.
It all started earlier this year at the annual parents meeting of Kuyasa, a school for children who are intellectually impaired, during a discussion about fund-raising.
Searle, a new parent, decided she would put her cooking skills to use to raise funds. She approached the company where she works, Compass SA Cooks & Chefs, with an idea for helping raise money for Kuyasa.
Compass decided to get fully involved in her planned charity event and gave her some useful contacts as well as financial support. “Businesses in Grahamstown have been very helpful,” Searle says, and she has received food donations from Oatlands Bakery, Pick ‘n Pay, Gourmet Fresh and others.
Originally her idea was simply to sell curry and rice but because of the support she has received, the event has grown and now promises to be something special.
Jill Rothman, the headmistress of Kuyasa Special School, is particularly pleased with the planned cook-off, saying she has “never had a parent run with an idea to raise funds”.
The cook-off will take place on Saturday, 3 September at Memory Hall, St Andrew’s Prep School. Six Eastern Cape chefs, from East London, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, will compete and their dishes will be judged according to presentation and taste.
Along with the curry and rice, there will be beverages available, lucky draws and a wine auction. A disco for the children will take place after the event.
Most children at Kuyasa are from underprivileged backgrounds and orphanages, and the cook-off aims to create awareness amongst the community about the support available for intellectually impaired children and their families in Grahamstown. “The initial reason why we wanted to raise funds was to buy sewing machines to teach sewing skills to mothers and children,” she says.
Searle hopes the money raised by the cook-off will be invested in resources to create skills that will allow the children to sustain themselves. She said that if people are taught a skill “they have it for the rest of their life”. Tickets are on sale for R35.00 per person from Teresa Searle (079 303 0063) or Jill Rothman (046 622 6750).
