A Day in the Life of Sheffield’s Food for Life Programme Manager

Lisa’s day starts at 8am. After getting her kids to school she heads off for a day of work with Eat Smart Sheffield. Lisa works with over 80 schools across Sheffield, helping them to learn about good food and food culture in school. Lisa will usually visit two or three schools a week where she might do a whole-school assembly about healthy eating, a workshop with parents on cooking on a budget, or observe the dining experience during lunchtime. The most popular topic is probably on sugar awareness – children gasp when they see how much sugar there can be in popular foods and drinks (nearly nine cubes of sugar in one can of Coke!). Lisa will also sit down with staff to talk through the Food for Life Award, helping them to plan activities so they can work through the award in a way that works for them. Often schools will be doing so much of the award work already without even knowing it, and it’s important to Lisa that schools get the recognition they deserve.

Lisa’s support to schools has made a massive difference over the last four years, with 17 Food for Life Awards achieved to date and more schools joining the programme each year. One school even achieved their award in just three weeks – this could be a record!

When Lisa is back at the Eat Smart Sheffield office, she writes a regular termly newsletter for schools, has a weekly column in the local paper sharing top tips for living a healthy lifestyle, and manages all the Eat Smart Sheffield social media platforms. On top of this, Lisa organises training events and even runs a Small Grant Scheme to help schools with any funding they may need to help them on their good food journey. Successful grant awards have contributed to setting up school cooking or gardening clubs, water bottles for children to help support water-only policies, and even a smoothie maker!

Lisa is super busy and juggles a lot of different things across her week but is reaping the rewards with fantastic results across schools in Sheffield. Lisa and the work of Eat Smart Sheffield is making a real difference to the school food culture across the city.

To find out more about Lisa’s work and Eat Smart Sheffield you can visit the website or follow them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you want to know more about how Food for Life can make a difference in your school, you can read more here.