Team spotlight: Soraya
The first in a series highlighting members of our team.
We caught up with Soraya at Shaw House one wet Wednesday afternoon. She’d just finished a cookery class and the whole building smelt wonderful with the aroma of freshly baked bread.
Read on to find out more about what her role as Chief Operating Officer at Inn Churches involves, the challenges, and what inspires her.
Can you share a bit about your role within Inn Churches and what it entails?
My role is to develop and deliver the Cooking Hub strand of Inn Churches. It’s a very varied position which is what I love about it. One day I can be teaching families with young children how to cook up a healthy dish, the next I could be delivering a food safety course at a church or a community organisation, and by the end of the week I could be helping a group of mums to run a café with the Lord Mayor being one of their special guests. I could be helping to deliver an away day for a corporate company, writing a funding bid or completing an evaluation or summary for some completed funding that we have received and spent on something really exciting. I follow up inquiries, organise new groups and courses to start. I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities to be able to work with new organisations, businesses, schools, colleges and community groups.
What do you offer?
We deliver one off cookery workshops, courses and cookery demonstrations for everyone inclusively, so no one is left out.
I am passionate about teaching essential life skills, cooking from scratch, and balancing the diet. I believe everyone should have access to nutritious food and have the skills and know how to cook a good healthy meal.
We offer team building and away days, where we invite teams to work together to make a delicious healthy recipe or compete for the best dish. Cooking together is a great way to develop a team spirit and a fab time for them to get creative and to show off their competitiveness.
We partner with Jamie’s Ministry of Food to deliver a fun and friendly hands-on eight-week cooking experience. We have access to hundreds of tried and tested, nutritionally balanced recipes to choose from, which allows us to deliver something to meet the needs of all our cookery workshop participants.
We offer face-to-face food safety courses certified by the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health at three levels: Introduction (level 1, ideal for schools or community groups), Foundation (level 2, aimed at adults working in the food industry) and Intermediate (level 3, for supervisors and managers).
Finally, we can organise bespoke catering for formal dinners, community events, birthday parties, working lunches, afternoon teas or other special occasions, using surplus and intercepted food.
What inspired you to get involved?
I am a chef by trade and wanted to share my knowledge with others. Personally I find food and cooking to be such an exciting part of life, I love experiencing new foods and flavours and I would love others to share my enthusiasm. Every class enables us to give many people including children a chance to explore their taste buds, and help them gain more confidence to be a little more experimental and adventurous with their food choices.
Could you describe a memorable experience or moment you’ve had whilst at Inn Churches?
I would say that there have been many moments over the six years that I have been here. One particular highlight was when our whole team helped us to produce 2,500 recipe parcels for MyLivingWell during self-care week in 2022. The recipe parcels contained all the ingredients needed to make a delicious takeaway as well as the instructions. We received a massive 140 hours of volunteers time, the amazing volunteers carried, packed, lifted and shifted 155 boxes of peppers 648kg of onions 240 boxes of curry jars, 350 boxes of oil 4200 packets of spices 60 cases of tomatoes and not to mention breaking down 24kg of garlic as well as recycling all the waste.
What challenges does your role bring and how have you overcome them?
One of my many challenges was when I first started working here and Juli said that there was no money set aside to deliver the cooking hub but she was willing to take the chance and see how we could make it work. So I applied for different pots of funding to be able to deliver the cookery workshops and I am always on the lookout for new opportunities to be able to build our offer.
Are there any upcoming projects or initiatives that you are particularly excited about?
Yes, a massive one, but I’m not at liberty to speak about it at the moment 🙂 Watch this space!
How has being part of Inn Churches impacted you personally?
Every day I wake up and I feel grateful and privileged to be able to help so many different people in one way or another. It has made me reflect on my own life life, and helped me realise what the most important things are, what really makes me happy.
If you could have a superpower to aid your work within Inn Churches what would it be and why?
Get the thing that I’m not at liberty to talk about yet 🙂
Are you willing to share a quirky or interesting fact about yourself that your fellow team members might not know?
I used to ride a motorbike. It was a retro custom bike with dragon painted on the tank: our group of partners and friends rode to Amsterdam then to Assen to watch some bike racing My bike broke down (only overheated), so me and my sister-in-law pushed it into a carpark, but then we spent ages looking for the rest of our group to tell them. When we found them I couldn’t remember where I’d left the bike! I did eventually find it, it had cooled down and off we went on our merry way.
Finally – if you could swap roles with another team member for a day, who would it be and why?
I would swap with Yordano, I think it would be great to see where all the food that he delivers goes to and it would be an amazing opportunity to meet all the people who are helping those who are most vulnerable in their communities.
