Open House: How to use cookery to grow your youth group

Open House: How to use cookery to grow your youth group

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic young people are more disconnected from others, church, youth work, and even God, than ever before. This has had a significant impact upon youth groups, with many being smaller and struggling with consistent attendance from young people. As someone who runs a church youth group and is experiencing this firsthand, I recognise that it can therefore seem difficult to build a strong sense of community and can frustratingly feel as if there is little growth - both numerically and within the young people’s lives and faith. For those of us who are encountering these challenges new creative resources can be incredibly helpful, and so we have developed Open House.

What is Open House?

Youthscape’s Open House cookery programme has been designed to facilitate meaningful relationships amongst a group of young people and can be run with the aim being to either connect with new young people, or to invest in the friendships and development of young people within a group that already exists. Over eight sessions, those taking part will learn to cook a range of different dishes, be encouraged to reflect upon and build healthy relationships, grow in confidence and social skills, and be given the opportunity to use all they have learnt to host a meal for others. There is also the option to incorporate specific conversations around faith when running the programme, with the aim being to create a space where young people can reflect upon their relationship with God and can get to know him more.

Open House has been run with over 400 young people in Luton in different formats over the past four years and has made a significant impact in many lives. It has been delivered primarily at Youthscape, with a new group of young people taking part each time, and has created many connections that have translated into strong friendships within the group and long-term investment from youth workers into young people’s lives. For those who have taken part, the act of learning to cook together and then sitting down to eat that food in community has been a transformative experience that has stretched and challenged them and has taught them a great deal about themselves.

Using Open House to facilitate growth in your youth group

As the benefit of taking part in Open House has been evident for so many young people we decided that turning it into a resource that could be used by youth workers to run the programme in other contexts would be really helpful. This resource can be delivered exactly as it has been written to facilitate growth within your youth group, or elements of it can be adjusted to fit in with other sessions you have planned if you feel that would achieve what you want more effectively. Below is a brief overview of how you may want to use the resource in a range of different ways to facilitate growth within your youth group:

Numerical Growth

Open House can be run as an outreach tool by asking local schools, professionals and parents/ carers who you may have connections with to refer young people who they think would benefit from taking part. As it is significantly skills-based it is an easy programme to ask others to suggest young people for, and if you would like to connect those young people into your youth group you can create the opportunity for them to get to know others who attend by inviting them to the meal.