A YOUTH club has been recognised for turning food that would normally be thrown away into hot, nutritional meals for hundreds of hungry children.

Rose Hill Junior Youth Club was awarded a five star hygiene rating during the latest inspection by city food safety officers last month.

The charity, which is based at Rose Hill Community Centre, has been running for seven years and currently puts on between three and six different sessions each week.

Those who attend are aged between five and 11, with an estimated 180 children and young people attending activities ranging from from arts and crafts classes and sports to dancing and board games.

Fran Gardner, Greensquare Rose Hill community worker, said: “We started offering food about four years ago when we realised that children were coming to us from school hungry.

“For some of the children living in poverty the chance of them getting a warm, nutritional meal at home was not a given so we started producing a cooked meal ourselves to fill the gap.

“When we moved in January 2016 into the new community centre we were able, because of the excellent kitchen, to really develop our food offering for the children.”

A kitchen team of four now produce a large hot buffet at every session with six to eight choices, including vegetarian and halal options.

Ms Gardner said: “We also work with Oxford Food Bank to use food surplus, so turning food that would have gone to landfills into hot, nutritional meals for the kids.

“The things were able to produce with that food makes it heartbreaking that it otherwise would have been thrown away.”

The youth club was previously given a five star rating in 2016 and maintained this highest rating in the recent inspection.

Standards were judged as ‘good’ in all three criteria – which include hygienic food handling; cleanliness and condition of facilities and building; and management of food safety.

Ms Gardner said: “We are a registered food business so obviously food safety is something we take very seriously and it is even more important as we are providing food for children.

“We feel that anything less than a five isn’t good enough because the children deserve food prepared to the highest standards.”

She added: “It was a lengthy inspection over two hours but proved to us that we are doing all the right things.”

Visit rosehilljyc.org for more information about the youth club’s weekly sessions.