Crossley’s St Brigid’s hall will host the fourth annual Winter Fusion Dinner on Saturday with chef Christopher Grace providing a mouth-watering three-course menu full of local produce.

“The theme is from the land and from the area around here, so it’s about getting as much stuff from the locals as we can,” Mr Grace said.

The Proudfoots owner will incorporate locally-grown potatoes and onions with offerings including potato and leek soup and potato gnocchi. Lamb and apple pie will also be on the menu. 

There will be musical performances from acts including Gabby Steele, winner of the Koroit Irish Festival Danny Boy competition, and Celtic group Aniar.

The event is a fund-raiser for the Warrnambool Chaplaincy Committee, which provides chaplaincy services in four Warrnambool schools, and the fledgling Big Life program.

Chaplaincy committee president Sean Kenny said more than 160 people were expected to attend.

“The dinner is a fund-raiser and we have an auction as well, which is a lot of donated items from local businesses,” he said.

“It’s quite a team effort to pull it together and it’s always a good, fun night.”

Mr Kenny said the Big Life project was continuing to gain momentum since it was launched earlier this year.

“I think generally speaking it’s definitely creating interest, we’ve done some surveying of staff, they’re certainly engaged,” he said. 

“The school principals are really supportive of it and I’m getting feedback from outside the schools from parents saying how good it is, we’ve had kids say they would like to do mindfulness exercises before exams and that sort of thing.”

Big Life teacher Michael Barling said the unique project was working across Brauer and Warrnambool colleges to help students overcome challenges.

“In terms of take-up from staff and kids it’s something that’s happening every day with different levels of experience for teachers and kids it teaches them to modify the program to suit the classroom and we’re finding that’s working pretty well,” he said.

“We’re rolling out a new set of resources this term of some other materials to help teachers.”

The program is hosting a parents’ forum tonight with about 25 parents from the two schools attending.

Mr Barling said this was the perfect opportunity to get feedback on the program.

“This is the point where we now take it to the community and take it to the parents to say this is what we’re trying to achieve, have you got any ideas? We need your input,” he said.

“We will share with them what we’ve been doing so far and hope they might be able to give us some input as well in what they would want from it.”

The Winter Fusion Dinner will be held on Saturday from 6.30pm at St Brigid’s Church and Hall, Crossley.

For tickets contact Katy on 5562 9246.