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Community Kitchen
 Butterflies experience has been that to engage the interest and
motivation of street and working children and to sustain their
interest in studies, the curriculum has to be relevant and the
teaching methodology should be child friendly and fun. We therefore
have included Life Skill Education as an integral part of our
curriculum. This is even more important in the case of adolescents and
we offer them various options to opt out of an unskilled and insecure
existence. When street children reach adolescence, they begin to worry
about their future. Mere vocational training is not sufficient in
making them self-reliant, thus, it is necessary for these adolescents
to be given life skill education including skills of managing a
business if they are to compete in the labour market. We feel that
adolescents should be provided with skills that are marketable, which
will ensure a sufficient level of monetary return, empowering them to
break the poverty cycle, and giving them a life of dignity and
respect.
BUTTERFLIES COMMUNITY KITCHEN: A CAREER OPPORTUNITY
Responding to their needs Butterflies designed the Community Kitchen
programme in June 2003 that provides for:
● Food
● Elementary education
● Vocational Training and Life Skills
● Employment
 The community kitchen project provides training in food production,
marketing and distribution. This has appealed to several adolescents
and they see it as an exit from unskilled labour to a career in
restaurants, hotel or in setting up their own enterprise.
The Community Kitchen involves 12 adolescents from the street who are
helped in managing the kitchen. Eminent institutions like Pusa
Institute of Hotel Management, Catering & Nutrition, Taj Mansingh and
ITC Maurya Sheraton have provided training to the adolescents in
preparing food, packaging and serving. The trainees at the community
kitchen are also enrolled in the NIOS education programme and are part
of other activities of Butterflies like the Children’s Development
Bank, Health Co-operative, Alternate Media, Computer Education etc.
The income generated from the Community Kitchen gives them a status of
a worker in a dignified and respectful profession and equips them for
a career in the hospitality industry where there is space for more and
more trained manpower. The more enterprising among them also have the
option of setting up their own catering business.
 GOAL
Butterflies Community Kitchen aims to:
● provide hygienically prepared wholesome meals at highly subsidized
rates to street and working children
● provide a nutritious and hygienic meal as food for education - to
motivate street and working children to
attend school regularly
● encourage children to save the money in Children’s Development Bank
(which would otherwise be spent on
buying food)
● provide marketable technical skills to adolescents in food
production and catering services that aims to
enhance employment
opportunity for children.Vocational Training is given in 6 key aspects of running a
restaurant
business namely Cooking, Serving, Packing, Operations, Marketing and
Distribution,and Finance
● Impart Life Skills education to enable these under-privileged
adolescents to gain a place within the rank of professionals circle as
children from more
privileged backgrounds. The curriculum includes
modules on communication, etiquette, discipline, savings,
entrepreneurship, banking, etc
● open the doors of employment: The ultimate objective of community
kitchen is to prepare the adolescents so that they are either able to
work in any
fine dining restaurants or run their own commercial kitchen
CHILDREN’S PARTICIPATION
Butterflies Community Kitchen is a complete initiative of adolescents
who run and manage the kitchen on their own. It has proved to be a
great institution wherein adolescents have learned the skills of
decision-making, leadership, teamwork, management, entrepreneurship,
communication, etiquette and discipline.
 PROMOTING HEALTHY FOOD
● Free nutritious meals to more than 200 street and working children,
associated with Butterflies programme
in the night
shelters, who have agreed to continue their education in the formal
schools
● Highly subsidized (Rs 2.50) nutritious meals to more than 400
children in the contact points and night
shelters run
by Butterflies
● Priced meals to offices such as Butterflies, other NGOs , hospitals,
Corporate houses, and for meetings/
workshops in academic institutions,
to people at Nizamuddin East outlet, near Sarai Kale Khan and ISBT
● Packed lunches to Government organized programmes and fairs for
children
BUTTERFLIES CATERING SERVICE
Butterflies
Community Kitchen provides hygienically packed nutritious healthy food at
very reasonable price to any location in Delhi. We take orders for
catering for seminars, conferences, meetings, melas (fairs), parties etc.
We can also prepare food for people with diet restrictions.
FUTURE PLANS
Our future plans include
taking on contracts of school canteens where we will provide healthy food
to children combined with nutrition education informing them about the
nutrition value of what they consume and promote healthy eating and
drinking habits to replace fast foods and cola fads.
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