With Culinary Skills, Granted ‘Hope of Life’
Ajinomoto (Malaysia) Berhad’s Culinary Programme for Underprivileged Youths
Kuala Lumpur, 28 December 2016 – More reasons to celebrate the upcoming New Year as hope of life continues to blossom. Leading by example, Ajinomoto Group is dedicated to building social sustainability at where we serve throughout the world. As a good wrap up for the meaningful 2016 and a good head start for a whole new year, a social and skill development programme, namely ‘Hope of Life with Culinary Arts’ was planned and kick-started by Ajinomoto (Malaysia) Berhad in November 2016 with the collaboration from HOPE worldwide Malaysia, Malaysian Institute of Baking (MIB) and Junior Chamber International (JCI) Kuala Lumpur.
This programme was initiated back in year 2013, carried out as a goodwill initiative to inspire, empower, educate and develop underprivileged community especially the youths with some skills that could help them to sustain their living in the future and at the same time eradicate social issues caused by poverty. This year is the 3rd year in a row for the programme and we have successfully attracted participation of 26 underprivileged youths aged 15 to 23 years old from families with monthly income below RM1000 who are currently benefited under HOPE Worldwide Malaysia’s Health and Education Programme.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Driven by the passion to shed light upon life of the poor and the needy through empowering them with culinary skills, there are a total of 5 classes stretching from November 2016 to March 2017 for the underprivileged youths, consisting of 1 culinary theory class, 2 hot cooking classes with the focus on popular Malaysian street food and hawker food and 2 baking classes.
Progressively, the programme had completed 2 classes, in specific the culinary theory class and a hot cooking class with popular Malaysian street food menu in November. Later on, it was followed by a baking class held in December under the guidance of MIB’s Faculty. During the class, the participants were taught to make snack with recipe created by MIB.
In order to assess the learning progress and to give the trained participants an experience on how the learnt culinary skill will benefit them in the pursuit of future success, there will be 1 Charity Selling campaign in the month of March 2017. All participants will prepare one of the recipes which they have learned earlier and are given a chance to try hands-on in food selling. The fund collected from the activity will be donated to the beneficiaries later on. Apparently after the Charity Selling activity, Ajinomoto (Malaysia) Berhad will hold a graduation programme to endorse the completion of the culinary training and acknowledge the achievement of all graduates.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The diligent arrangement in these culinary classes offers great exposure for the beneficiaries to learn and polish their culinary skills, be it in preparing delicious street food, cooking scrumptious hawker stall delicacies, baking some indulging pastries or even experiencing the selling activity. These new skills will certainly brighten up the future of all participating beneficiaries and hopefully continue to sparkle their passion to attempt on a small business startup anytime soon. Together with all the collaborated parties, we form a harmony society in which poverty can be overcome with insight of living skills.
