The local campaign, led by the team at Hastings District Respite Care with the support of Port Macquarie-Hastings Council, garnered widespread support from the local community within hours of being launched online this week.
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If successful, Port Macquarie will be home to a Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food pop-up kitchen for 12 months with the facility to be used to spread the word about healthy, nutritious eating.
Spearheading the campaign is Hastings District Respite Care general manager Raymond Gouck who has put his heart firmly behind the Jamie Oliver campaign and a grander vision of nurturing a long-term, community driven approach to good living, resource sharing and social well-being.
"One of the things we try very hard to do is work toward a long-term goal of creating stronger links within our community," Mr Gouck said.
"There are many organisations, like ours, that have a lot of resources from commercial kitchens to vehicles. We feel they could be better utilised if we all just made them available for our community to use.
"This could be the catalyst that stimulates some sort of community cooperation and collaboration."
Hastings District Respite Care has four kitchens, two of which would be suitable to operate commercially under the Ministry of Food program. Mr Gouck said there are many organisations across the Hastings who have resources at the ready that could make a significant difference to the success of community projects such as the dementia friendly cafe plan led by MP Leslie Williams, and the community garden to be launched by council next month.
"We can leverage off this event by using a celebrity like Jamie Oliver to get people thinking about what is out there and how we can work together."
