Hospital meals charity wins Pride of Manchester award for work with children and parents

 Emmie’s Kitchen, an organisation that strives to help parents caring for their children in hospital, has won the Pride of Manchester award at the 2019 Be Proud awards.

Eve Narayn-Nicholas started the organisation in 2018 just a few months after her daughter, Emmie, was diagnosed with leukaemia, which is where the name Emmie’s Kitchen comes from.

The organisation aims to help parents of children being treated in hospital, by providing them with a nutritious ,three course meal every month.

Emmie was in hospital for several months battling the disease. While in hospital, both Eve and Emmie realised how little nutritious food is provided for both children and parents by the hospital.  

Eve said: “The parents do not have access to a lot of decent, nutritious food. We try to provide a three-course meal for each parent and each child in the hospital, at least once a month.

“We will also try to provide meals for other family members such as grandparents, who are not living in the hospital but are visiting frequently.

“We know how difficult it is for parents to try and balance living at the hospital with their child, whilst also cooking nutritious, home made meals. It’s almost impossible.

“We came up with the idea of cooking a few meals at home and bringing them in for the parents and children on the same ward as Emmie whilst she was in the hospital, then the idea kind of just grew from there”. 

The organisation won both the Community project of the year award, and the Pride of Manchester award at the recent Be Proud awards. They were nominated for the community project award, but the Pride of Manchester Award was a complete shock to everybody involved, as it was announced as a surprise additional award at the end of the ceremony.

Eve said: “Winning the pride of Manchester Award was a complete shock, and utterly overwhelming for all of us involved. We had been nominated for the community project award, so we knew we were in with a chance of winning that.

“We had just calmed down from winning the award, when they announced that we’d won the Pride of Manchester Award too. I was in tears.

“Because we are quite a new organisation, and maybe one that falls under the radar quite often as not many people have heard of us, to get the recognition we did that night was just unbelievable. It was lovely”.

Emmie’s kitchen has had at least 50 different volunteers since its opening in June 2018, consisting of cooks and servers, but they also include servicing volunteers, who will sit down and chat to the parents of the children in a friendly environment.

The parents not only have physical needs that need catering to, but also psychological needs as spending such long periods of time in the hospital can be traumatising.

Anyone wishing to volunteer should ring Eve on 07849 778725.