Jamie Oliver - Charity and Campaigning

Charity and Campaigning

Oliver conceived and established the Fifteen charity restaurant where he trained fifteen disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Following the success of the original restaurant in London, more Fifteens have opened around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam opened in December 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay opened in May 2006 and Fifteen Melbourne opened in September 2006 with Australian friend and fellow chef Tobie Puttock.

Oliver then began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and to get children eating nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series Jamie's School Dinners, challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating. Jamie's efforts brought the subject of school dinners to the political forefront and changed the types of food served in schools. In 2012, after supporting Scottish primary school blogger Martha Payne in her NeverSeconds blog, Oliver attacked education secretary Michael Gove for failing to adhere to the standards agreed to by the previous administration.

In December 2009, Oliver was awarded the 2010 TED Prize for his campaigns to "create change on both the individual and governmental levels" in order to "bring attention to the changes Englanders and now Americans need to make in their lifestyles and diet."

In 2010, Oliver joined several other celebrity chefs on the series The Big Fish Fight, in which Oliver and fellow chef Gordon Ramsay spend time on a trawler boat to raise awareness about the discarding of hundreds of thousands of saltwater fish because the fishermen are prohibited from keeping any fish other than the stated target of the trawl.

Oliver is a patron of environmental charity Trees for Cities.