Ripple effects of community education

Noble Park Community Centre collaborated with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation on a Cooking for Instructors course, as part of the Healthy Kids Advisors initiative. 

Over 10 weeks, the community centre hosted 40 people to gain Food Safety Supervisory Certifications and, through pleasurable food education, practical guidance to cook healthy, vegetable-forward recipes and facilitate cooking classes in the community.

The course aimed to make use of the centre’s thriving community garden and bring together diverse community members united by shared passions. Attending the course were local youth workers learning how to deliver cooking sessions for their youth groups, disability support workers, and members of community organisations and the general public with a passion for cooking and gardening and a desire to run cooking programs in their native cuisines.

Participants were taught:

• Menu development and seasonal recipe planning
• Delivering cooking classes for younger age groups
• Project management and delivery of community cooking classes 
• Food safety essentials
• Delivering knife safety demonstrations
• Adapting to food allergies in the kitchen

One participant of the course, Janice King, explained, “The Cooking for Instructors course taught people simple recipes which were very achievable. I made spaghetti for the first time ever, thinking it was so hard, and it wasn't.”

Janice, a former teacher, had been looking to pursue employment pathways that merged her passions for tutoring and cooking. The Cooking for Instructors course spurred on her ambitions and helped her set up a new Cooking for Kids course delivered at the Noble Park Community Centre. Janice hopes the classes will encourage local children in the City of Greater Dandenong to embrace the world of cooking and experience her "farm to fork" mantra using ingredients from the community garden.

About the Healthy Kids Advisors initiative 

Funded until June 2024, the Healthy Kids Advisors initiative was delivered by the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation and supported by the Victorian Government and Australian Government. 

This community engagement initiative was active in 13 priority communities to spread pleasurable food education and encourage participation in the state-wide Vic Kids Eat Well movement. Read more. 

Community place-based projects 

The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation works alongside community partners to address local health priorities for children and young people. With 20 years of experience, we develop and implement customised, place-based projects driven by fresh, seasonal, delicious food. For more information, please get in touch via info@kitchengardenfoundation.org.au.