The Camp Verde Community Library is hosting a garden-to-table cooking class for children ages 6 to 13, hosted by Home For New Beginnings with the help of Gardens for Humanity.
The course will meet once weekly for three weeks and will be split into two sections for those ages 6 to 9 and for those ages 10 to 13.
Home for New Beginnings, founded in 2016, is a local nonprofit that aims to build homes for displaced children in the Verde Valley. The organization received a grant in 2020 from United Way to start a social enterprise selling pies, which they named Divine Pies.
Divine Pies is the organization’s main source of income. Pam Barton, the organization’s executive director, explained that many nonprofits start thrift stores to generate income, but they preferred the option of a pie business. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they couldn’t sell their pies in restaurants, so they started at the Cornville farmers market.
Barton said that they did well financially during their first year of operation, and added that they still have a pie trailer they take to farmers’ markets and events. “We keep persevering because our kids really need us,” Barton said.
The children’s cooking class, which started in October 2022 and uses the library’s kitchen, grew out of that endeavor. The classes teach children the fundamentals of gardening, harvesting, cooking and potentially running a kitchen in the future, and are always full.
“We teach the basic skills because nobody knows how to cook anymore,” Barton said. “Nobody even prepares meals at school. It’s all prepackaged stuff. We’ve worked with the food shares and we saw that people get all this food that nobody knows how to cook.”
About a month ago, Home for New Beginnings received a donation of a parcel of land across the street from the library to use for a community garden. They are working with Gardens for Humanity to maintain it for community and educational use and are still finding volunteers and sponsors.
This week’s course will cover herb planting and the kids will be given seedlings to take home and grow as part of learning to be self-sustaining via cooking.
“It’s a part of life,” Barton said. “In order to sustain yourself, you have to know how to cook, and especially these days, with prices going up, people are going back to learning the basics of life. The importance of teaching children life skills is where we’re at, and our kids just love to cook. They have a blast.”
Home for New Beginnings is trying to host the class every month, with a potential six-week course in June also in the planning stage. In addition, they run a commercial kitchen at Beaver Creek Elementary School, where they offer a program for those 14 and over to help them get food handler cards. Students can learn how to work in a commercial kitchen, help with baking the pies and help with the farmers market, helping them learn how to become entrepreneurs.
Home for New Beginnings is seeking land and buildings to build a group home, which is expected to house 10 children per home supervised by house parents. The organization is still trying to make its existence known.
Barton said that there are around 19,000 homeless or displaced children in Arizona, compared to only 5,000 foster homes. She previously worked in foster care as a court appointed special advocate.
“I had some very horrendous cases and I learned a lot doing that,” Barton said. “I learned that our system was failing our children terribly. Nobody even knows where the kids are going anymore, especially since COVID. Our kids need us desperately.”
The garden-to-table cooking class will take place Wednesday, May 24, at 4:30 p.m. Registration is required.
