Making a Difference - Community Food and Health

clubs in previous years. They plan to build the capacity of young people so that they can
deliver peer education activities in their clubs or elsewhere themselves. Many of the senior
members of the clubs have an interest in food preparation, cooking and a healthy diet and
many of these have expressed an interest in learning more and passing this information on
to others in their youth clubs or the wider community.
Heel and Weel initially started in 2007 when four young people came together to start
developing the project. However, their other commitments, such as school exams
prevented them from progressing the project throughout the school term. This peer
education programme will be relaunched and will start again with planning sessions
attended by all stakeholders, including the young people, who will be key to developing the
project. The young people will attend short courses and get involved in promoting
activities.
Questions included:
Issues on achieving standards in peer education
It is very important that the peer educators have ownership of the project. However, they
will be expected to have food hygiene skills and will be supported to achieve a high
standard throughout the course. Peer educators will be able to take as long as they need
to train to ensure they have the confidence and skills to teach their peers. They will also
have the option to help others lead programmes instead of leading their own programme if
they are not ready to do this.
Healthy issues particular to remote islands
Although access to a wide range of foods, including exotic fruit, has improved in recent
years, there remains poorer access to a wide range of fruit and vegetables in some parts
of the islands. There is also no access to fast food outlets such as McDonalds, although
there are local fast-food shops such as fish and chip shops. Households still have a
tradition of eating together, perhaps more so than on mainland Scotland.
See Appendix 3 for workshop groups responses to tasks.