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Need Support with Meals?

If you or your family are currently dealing with a health challenge and need meals, please call Cherie at 953-7200 or email ceres@kitchencosmology.com.

To Download a copy of our Brochure click here.

"Food is the one central thing about the human experience that can open up both our senses and our conscience to our place in the world." ~ Alice Waters, Chef Founder of Chez Panisse

Want to Help?

  • Make a donation to support our work.

  • If you are a teen, volunteer and earn community service hours while you learn or sharpen your cooking skills and make a vital difference for others.

  •  If you have a few extra hours a week or a month, there are many ways to help, from picking up donations to delivering meals.

  • If you are a wholesale food supplier, a grocery store owner, a farmer, or a kitchen supply store, make a pledge of food or equipment.

For information about volunteering, please contact Judi Pereira at 823-7784, or email judi59art@yahoo.com .

Donations can be made to Ceres Community Project, 5280 Gravenstein Hwy N Sebastopol, CA 95472

Who is Ceres?Ceres is a Roman goddess of agriculture. The Universal Mother, she symbolizes unconditional love and is considered the most generous of all the goddesses. The offering of food to others is central to the Ceres archetype. Ceres also represents the cycles of birth, death and renewal – and the experience of grief and loss that accompany them. She provides spiritual sustenance and faith that life will be reborn.

Ceres is associated with collaboration – allowing mutual efforts to flourish and discovering creative responses through combining our efforts with others. She embodies the concrete awareness of ourselves as having an effect on the environment where we live.  Interdependence, self-esteem, caring, sharing, and adapting to changing circumstances are all part of Ceres’ archetypal gifts.

 

 

 

The Ceres Community Project:  Nourishing Life One Meal at a Time

     It’s a Thursday afternoon and the kitchen at The Community Church of Sebastopol is bursting with music and activity. At the large prep table, two young women are talking while they prepare butternut squash, red peppers and onions for vegetarian enchiladas. A young man is sautéing onions and garlic for a minestrone soup while two of his friends mix together the ingredients for turkey loaf. At the end of the afternoon, eight families – each dealing with a serious health challenge – will be the welcome recipients of a bounty of organic meals.

The students are part of an innovative project in West Sonoma County about an hour north of San Francisco. The project addresses a range of needs for the students while providing a valuable service for local families facing cancer and other health challenges. Students learn or strengthen cooking skills, deepen their relationship with fresh foods, have an opportunity to experience food as a fundamental support to their bodies, and discover their power to make a difference in the world. They can use their participation to fulfill community service requirements and, for culinary arts students, to gain work experience in a non-school kitchen.

A Big Vision

Imagine if every family facing a health challenge could be assured delicious, high quality meals prepared with love. Today, one out of four people say that in a crisis there is no one they could turn to for help.  Illness takes a big toll not only on individuals who are sick, but on their loved ones.  The stress of the illness is often compounded by the loss of an income coupled with enormous medical bills. One parent may be doing the work of two.

At a time when people most need to eat well, it’s often the last thing on their mind. The Ceres Community Project aims to help with a multi-faceted approach that includes a data base of private chefs, a network of trained volunteers, and our Youth Project, where teens come together each week to learn and enhance their cooking skills while preparing meals for local families facing an illness.

Our vision is to eventually have groups cooking every afternoon with satellite projects operating out of the local high school culinary departments. We imagine having our own kitchen with organic gardens outside the door and thirty or forty families receiving meals at any given time. And we hope that our efforts and learning will support similar projects in communities across the country.

I recently had the privilege of attending all three days of the Bioneers Conference in Marin. Bioneers brings together people from all over the world who are helping to build a sustainable world. I was struck by how much of the conversation that weekend was about our relationships with one another, about building community, and about working right where we are to do something in a new way. For me, that is the heart of what The Ceres Community Project is about.