Healthy Kids School Canteen Association

Auburn North Public School

Auburn North Public School has a large multicultural population - 95% of the students incorporating 40 culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Forty countries are represented, including children from Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Afghani and Islander backgrounds. A significant number of students are former refugees.
 
The school conducts a number of multicultural events. Their annual Community Festival Day aims to showcase and allow parents, students and the community to experience choral dance and instrumental performances, cultural artefacts and food from different cultures. The parents from different cultural groups get together to plan and prepare their traditional food for the day. Examples of foods available on the day include stuffed zucchini, baklava and cheese halawa.

In addition to the festival day, the school also conducts multicultural days focussing on one specific culture each term. Parents from a particular cultural group cook the foods and the students have the opportunity to taste the foods and discuss the culture and its traditions. On the Arabic day foods such as Falafel are prepared. On Chinese day fried rice is available and on the day celebrating the Turkish culture Kðfte (Turkish meatballs) are prepared.

The school is the base for “Harmony House’ which conducts the “Schools as Community Centres” Program. The facilitator Christine promotes community development by working closely with the local community in identifying the needs and priorities for families with young children.  One program currently running in the school is their Cultural Cooking Cuisine Classes. Mothers from different cultural groups are encouraged to demonstrate the preparation of their traditional dishes to other parents. This promotes discussion about the types of foods eaten, culture, herbs and nutrition. It allows parents an opportunity to teach others about their culture, to give something back to their community and to promote racial harmony.

Harmony House has established a community garden within the grounds of the school. This has been done with the help of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Students, parents and community members are encouraged to tend their own plot of earth either during the day or on weekends. A number of different cultural groups such as Afghani, Sri Lankan, Islam, Turkish, Pakistani, Iraqi and Lebanese participate in the community garden program. Traditional vegetables such as Arabic and Chinese herbs are grown and harvested.

To link this program to the school the students have a garden club. Approximately 60 students take part in gardening activities where they are assigned specific responsibilities and often take vegetables home.