All Over Albany

#EatMeAlbany

Project: #EatMeAlbany, an Albany-based nutrition company that plans to teach Educooking classes (the art of learning which foods are good for you, why, and how to prepare them) -- using local ingredients -- to supply meals to the Capital City Rescue Mission.

Who: Alison Szczawinski

Short bio
Alison Szczawinski RD, CDN, LDN

Alison is a Registered Dietitian currently serving the Capital Region of New York. Most of Alison's professional experience is in medical nutrition therapy, writing nutrition prescriptions for diseases caused by poor diet. This inspired her microenterprise, which focuses instead on preventing disease through nutrition, education, and healthy lifestyle promotion.

She currently partners with local organizations to develop, improve, or supplement wellness programs. Services include: educational classes, health fair table, question and answer sessions, cooking demonstrations, interactive exercises and employee competitions.

Alison's strengths are clinical, but her passion is in education. She prides herself in explaining complex nutrition topics with simplicity. Her company's goal is to ensure all socioeconomic demographics have access to accurate, useful nutrition knowledge, and know how to translate that knowledge into their food choices. Pairing her nutritional knowledge with cooking classes is the next step in raising the health and knowledge of the Capital Area residents she serves.

A description of the proposed project
The Albany area needs more than a dietitian telling them to eat greens, they need to know how to cook them! And thus, Educooking classes were born.

Educooking: the art of learning which foods are good for you, why, and how to prepare them.

Alison would like to use this grant to expand the services offered by her current business to include cooking classes to demonstrate how to execute nutrition recommendations. These classes will pilot in local community locations to start and, if successful, will find their home as part of Alison's business expansion into a retail space off of Broadway Ave in Albany. Classes will be offered at varying times throughout the week, with heavier scheduling on weekends.

In an effort to further enrich the community, ingredients will be sourced locally and a portion of each class's meals will be donated to the Capital City Rescue Mission. These classes will be fun, educational and targeted to various participants: singles, couples, parents, low income, those managing a chronic illness, etc.

A few of the many needs Educooking classes would satisfy:
+ Raise the level of nutrition awareness in the Capital Area.
+ Engage young people to promote healthier lifestyles in a welcoming, fun way.
+ Teach our community how to prepare healthier foods on a budget.
+ Improve the health of the Capital Area as nutrition is the key to disease prevention.
+ Prepare meals for those who may need them, as a portion of each class's meals will be donated to the Capital City Rescue Mission.
+ Offer an inviting platform by which community members can field questions to a credentialed professional, without worrying what to eat for dinner.
+ Support local agriculture by sourcing as many ingredients as possible from local vendors, farms and CSAs.

2016 Empire State College Wellness Retreat Cooking Demonstration

How would the grant money help?
This grant would help provide all of the supplies necessary to begin offering Educooking classes. Including but not limited to:
a. Cookware (pots, pans, utensils, etc)
b. Ingredients
c. Portable electric burners (so that classes may be conducted anywhere there is electricity and running water)
d. Projector to display procedure steps and various nutritional information
e. Office supplies (copier/printer, paper, ink, poster board, etc) for handouts and recipe cards.
f. Marketing materials and website development.