During the June holidays, we were invited to check out Nutriville, a social enterprise that was established in 2011 that aimed to create novel yet practical ways to empower and equip senior folks in our community to help them age better and happier. The organisation was born when the founders, two young adults in their twenties, witnessed how their grandmother’s health and well-being deteriorated after a bad fall, and after being diagnosed with dementia. These two cousins then decided they wanted to do something meaningful for the senior folks in our community – they set up Nutriville and have been trying to accomplish their social mission ever since.

How is this social enterprise relevant to me, a mother with three kids, you may ask. Nutriville has launched a series of Food Art classes for children aged 4 and above, and are committed to channel their revenue from these programmes to engage their beneficiaries. I thought it might be worthwhile to check out what exactly is Food Art and find out what this social enterprise had to offer.

Nutriville’s FoodArt Programme is probably the first of its kind here in Singapore. The programme integrates food and art to create real art work, mosaic, crafts and clay. We checked out their “Carnival of FoodArt” at their pre-opening, and Ben and Becks had fun creating their own masterpiece with corn paint, carved potatoes and coloured rice.

It was a good hour of fun for them. I must say, given the neat freak that I am with my obsessive compulsion to keep everything orderly and clean, I might never allow this mess to happen at home. I’m glad Nutriville gave the kids a chance to make a mess and go creative on their drawing paper!

Nutriville offers a range of courses from creative FoodArt and food-carving to healthy cooking with traditional recipes. They also have classes that promote inter-generational learning, where you can bring a senior folk to go to class with you. The senior goes free too, for every paying participant. So if Grandpa or Grandma are bored out of their socks at home, they can attend class with junior, learn a thing or two about food art and in turn, pick up some skills. Special moments of bonding included too, I am pretty sure!

If you’d like to support Nutriville, do enquire at enquiry@nutriville.org, or visit their website and Facebook page for more details on their programmes, camps and workshops. Nutriville is located at Hangout@Nutriville, 153B Rochor Road, Bugis Village

Disclosure: We were invited to Nutriville’s pre-opening earlier in June. I did not receive any monetary compensation to write this and all opinions are my own.