Field of Interest:           Refugee &Asylum Seeker
Grant Recipient:           Western Region Health Centre Ltd
Project:                        Bilingual Nutrition Educators Project – Cooking Demonstrations and Market Tours
MCF Sub-fund:             Eastweb Fund

Many newly-arrived Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD)  populations in Australia experience food insecurity as they are faced with an unfamiliar food supply and new challenges in identifying, storing and preparing local fruits and vegetables. Food security is defined as the ability to access safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate food from non-emergency sources.

Fruit and vegetable consumption among CALD communities is lower than among the wider Australian population, which is a contributing factor to the observed high rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease in this population.

The objectives of the project are to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among CALD communities and to increase participants’ knowledge of how to access, store and prepare local produce. For example, it shows people where the fresh markets are, reassuring them that tinned/frozen (affordable) options are safe, teaching basic food handling skills like ‘best before’ dates and safe storage, and demonstrating how to use local produce which may be unfamiliar.

Cooking demonstrations and market tours are conducted by peer educators, in their own languages. Bilingual Educators have been recruited from prominent local CALD communities including Iraqi, Somali, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Burundi , Liberian, Burmese, Sudanese.

Over 600 CALD local residents have participated in market tours and practical cooking sessions in the first two years of the program.

For further information about the work of the Western Region Health Centre go to www.wrhc.com.au