Dave McNicholl writes a regular column for the Warrington Guardian and is head of the new Warrington Youth Zone

As I write this column, we are now into the third week of January the Christmas decorations are tucked away for another year and the New Year greetings are seeming a bit outdated.

However, looking back over the past month, one of the main parts of Christmas day is the meal and spending time together as a family unit or group of friends.

We are in the final stages of the construction of Warrington Youth Zone which is due to be completed within the next month.

One of the most important rooms in the Youth Zone is our training or mentoring kitchen. This is a large room equipped with a domestic kitchen, ovens and hobs and space to prepare food.

We will employ Youth and Community workers and volunteers who will be able to show children and young people how to cook and bake and then most importantly they can share a meal together.

Preparing a meal can be very time consuming and costly and often in in busy lives families need to resort to more convenient prepared meal options. The Youth Zone will provide children and young people the space, time and people who are able to educate them on how to budget, plan, prepare and serve healthy and nutritious meals which appeal to all members of the family.

The kitchen will include a dining room table and chairs, as children and young people have prepared a meal together, we will then encourage them to have dinner together and spend time talking to each other and sharing some of the conversations, fun, games, and laughter that can happen around a family table.

In the outside space at the Youth Zone, we will have a small allotment and our team of staff and volunteers will work with children and young people to grow fruit and vegetables from seeds. Once ripened the young people will use the produce, they have grown in the preparation of their meals to demonstrate the process of cycle of growing and preparing food, a concept often referred to as farm to fork.

We are searching for volunteers to support our work in the allotment and our training kitchen, if you have a few hours available each week to work with children and young people from across Warrington on either or both of these areas or any other aspect of the Youth Zone please get in touch by visiting our website warringtonyouthzone.org email: info@warringtonyouthclub.co.uk or call 909660.