The Good Food Project

by Lorna McGinnigal

The Good Food Project - what a joy it is! 

We launched the project as a pilot back in March 2025 within one of our local Primary Schools.   

It had been an idea sparked during covid times by one of church members (who also happens to be the Family Liaison officer in our local primary school) when delivering meals to the elderly.  

I am sure it is the same within all of our communities, but when there really is so much need it can often feel overwhelming and daunting almost to know where to start. So we put our heads together, tried to keep things simple and came up with what we thought was a good place to start- delivering some good honest food :)  

Our mission was simple — to provide fresh, healthy, and whenever possible, local food directly to families in our community. And… make it fun!  

Each “Good Food” bag comes with a simple recipe card together with the all ingredients needed for the given recipe- to encourage families to take their Good Food bags home & to enjoy cooking at home together.   

Our first Good Food bag (after much debate) contained a recipe for good old Scottish Lentil soup.  The recipe was given from one of our church members, famous for her incredible home baking.  We try to make sure the recipes are simple and low cost for continued cooking - It was a huge success!  

Our recipe cards are bright and engaging for children and on the reverse, we share our church details and ask families to send in any pictures they have of them enjoying at home. 

So far, the response has been great - we have been delighted with how many families have wanted to send in their photos and share how much they enjoyed cooking together at home. 

It has encouraged engagement both with our local school community and our church through social media and it is a great conversation starter, as the kids have been so proud to tell us how much they have enjoyed cooking - and of course, eating!   

In our second round of the project,  a few months later, the Good Food bag contained ingredients for a delicious Chick-Pea Curry - with a recipe given from the local schools catering team. 

Another low cost, but high flavour hit!  

Our third (and my personal favourite) was an Apple crumble which was extra special as all the fruit in our bags was locally grown and generously donated by members of our church and our local community.   

We were utterly blown away by the response and by the generosity of everyone- I have never seen so many apples arrive on my doorstep! And because of this generosity, we were able to take the Good Food Project & deliver it at a further three of our local primary schools.  

We have been so blessed by this project and the great response from both schools and families - deepening our relationships with both.   

I love the verse in Proverbs which reads,  “Giving a gift can open doors”  Proverbs 18v16  

Already we are seeing this to be true.  

Not only have we had our community respond with their fruit giving and donations towards the project, but we have also had local parents come forward asking if they can help with the project in any way.    

We’ve had teams of children coming fruit picking with us in local gardens. 

We’ve had Mums from the school coming to our church (or my home) alongside volunteers from the church - to pack the bags, weigh out and decant the ingredients and even help deliver the bags at the schools. School staff and support workers have all got involved and it has been such a joy to work together, sharing the Good Food with our community   

It has been wonderful to chat with so many families at the school - whether in the playgrounds, the dinner halls, school gates or at the supermarket in days to come.  At Christmastime we were even invited into one of our schools to lead an assembly and share what the Good Food project is all about. We even squeezed in some singing too!  

We always include some little additions in our bags too- maybe a little card with a scripture, or an Invitation to any of the goings on at our church and we are beginning to see the fruit of this.   

Our vision is that we can roll this project out within all the local primary schools in our area and continue to work with the schools and families bringing, not only the Good Food,  but the Good News in too :)