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Medibank Community Fund Partnership

Sowing the seeds for a lifetime of better health – Medibank Community Fund Partnership

The students at Sunshine North Primary School took centre-stage when the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation announced a new partnership with the Medibank Community Fund.

The partnership will see Medibank invest in the future health and wellbeing of the next generation of Australians by helping the Foundation bring the Kitchen Garden Program to another 70,000 additional Australian school children over the next four years.

The public announcement was made during a Year 3 & 4 kitchen class at Sunshine North Primary School in Melbourne’s west on Tuesday 24 July. Special guests enjoyed a garden tour and helped the students prepare morning tea.

The official party included our own Stephanie Alexander and CEO Ange Barry, along with George Savvides (Medibank Managing Director), Rita Marigliani (Manager, Group Community Relations, Culture, Capabilities & Communications), Victoria Hanlon (Media Advisor, Government & Public Affairs), Nicole Borg (Medibank Community Fund Coordinator), Simone Hamlin (Community Coordinator) and Emma McClements (Account Director, Daymark).

Some very excited Sunshine North students showed the special guests around the school garden under the proud eye of Principal Ken Ryan and Sunshine North PS Council President Janine Kessegian. They were then led into the beautiful school kitchen where each guest was allocated to a workstation to help the students finish off their celebratory dishes. The tasty seasonal menu included:

• Linguine with lemon parsley & mint
• Celery & parmesan salad
• Moroccan-spiced silver beet
• Orange & date couscous.

Our Medibank guests were amazed by the skills of the children and learnt a thing or two about how delicious fresh celery and silver beet can be, as well as receiving some handy pasta-making tips. As everyone sat down to share the dishes the speeches began.

Principal Ryan introduced Stephanie and Medibank MD George Savvides, who made the official announcement. Stephanie welcomed Medibank into the kitchen garden community, presenting them with their very own red watering can.

‘The Medibank Community Fund was initiated because of the importance of helping people to adopt a preventative health attitude to their own long term health and wellbeing outcomes. Encouraging healthy eating habits, greater physical activity and community connectedness are the Fund's three core aims and the Kitchen Garden Program does all three. We are extremely excited about this partnership. The opportunity to support the Foundation to reach more children, and through them their families, will significantly lift awareness and understanding of healthy food and eating practices in the Australian community,’ said Mr Savvides.

‘This vital support will enable the Foundation to work with many more school communities and in so doing, proactively promote healthier food choices that in turn will reduce the growing incidence of childhood obesity in this country,’ said Stephanie.

The Foundation would like to thank Sunshine North PS for being such wonderful hosts. The school is a great example of the Kitchen Garden Program’s success: a P-6 school of 280 students with a diverse socio-economic and cultural community, 34 nationalities are represented in the student population, with most students coming from families with a non-English speaking background. The Kitchen Garden Program has been running at Sunshine North since February 2007 and is a great source of pride to the school community.