Autumn 2015

STACIE’S STRATEGIES FOR ACCESSING CULTURE VIA FOOD
BRING DIVERSITY TO YOUR
VEGGIE PATCH
1 4
CONSULT WITH YOUR COMMUNITY TO
DEVELOP A MULTICULTURAL MENU
“Our garden has a number of vegetables and herbs from around
the world that are starting to produce well. We have sugar cane,
basil, Thai mint, Vietnamese mint and many more. Encourage
families and staff to share cuttings of herbs or vegetables that
they use in traditional foods. Garden to table works great in
our centre! The children will pick the required herbs for our chef
which brings authentic flavour to the day’s meals.”
2
CONSULT WITH FAMILIES ABOUT THEIR
CHILDREN’S FAVOURITE MEALS
“I always ask about children’s dietary requirements. Ask
families to share recipes and incorporate them where
possible,” advises Stacie. She says this provides a
wonderful insight into their family life, culture, and gives you
opportunities to be sincerely inclusive, and give all children
in the service an opportunity to experience another culture.
Stacie said it works even better if you can get the family
to visit the service and teach/share the preparation with
everyone. “One Mum, who is originally from China, came to
our centre to help us with Chinese New Year celebrations. We
enjoyed dumplings and made themed bookmarks. The Mum
told us that they haven’t been able to celebrate their new year
in the 3 years that they have been in Australia. She thanked us
for making her feel welcome and for supporting their culture.”
3
ASK ABOUT FOOD PREFERENCES
AT ENROLMENT
Stacie recommends sharing your existing menu and finding
ways to incorporate the family’s culture. Some of the questions
that you might like to incorporate are;
What foods do your family like to eat?
What are your child’s favourite foods?
What foods do you encourage for your child’s health?
Are there any foods you like to avoid?
What time of day does your child typically eat meals?
How/where do you feed your child? Does your child feed
him/herself?
What eating utensils does your child typically use?
Who usually eats meals with your child?
Which foods do you eat on holidays or special
occasions?
Do you have any recipes that you would like to share for
our menu?
We have a community vegetable garden. Would you like
to suggest any herbs or vegetables that we could grow
together?
Stacie shares an inspiring example: “About 6 months ago we
realised that we had a lot of vegetarian families. This led us
to explore the food practices of families much more deeply.
We emailed all families to advise that we were changing our
menu and asked if they could share with us any traditional
meals that their children loved at home. From this survey, we
picked and tested about 50 different recipes. For 6 weeks the
children ate a different meal each day! The menu we have
today is very multicultural and offers a vegetarian option
every day. We also love that it is based on the recipes that the
children picked, therefore the ones they liked best!”
5
USE THE CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE IN
YOUR TEAM
Stacie believes that this is essential. “What makes this work
possible is that I have a team of educators and a chef who
really support it. They are very on board and share their own
culture. I find learning about different cultures fascinating and
a lot of our discussion about culture comes from talking about
food. It’s an easy way to break down those barriers. My team
will bring and share different cultural foods like dumplings or
jellyfish salad. Some of them we instantly love and some of
them take a bit longer. I always ask them for recipes for my
own home cooking. I hope it shows my interest and support for
them to include their culture and family life in our centre”. The
end result of this is educators who feel empowered to offer their
cultural knowledge to better support children in the service.
5
SHOW YOU SINCERELY CARE
“My team are genuinely interested in learning about and
supporting families’ culture. Our families are closer and want
to share their stories because we have shown them that we will
act on the information they share. It also has given us some
great insights into children’s behaviour. One of the interesting
things that we learned is that many of the children are used to
and prefer eating spicy food. We actually had to find ways that
children could make their food spicier to encourage them to eat!”
Would you like support in designing a more culturally
inclusive approach to food in your service? The Bicultural
Support Service at MDA work with ECEC services to help
meet the specific needs of children and families from
culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
We provide mentoring, role modelling, cultural
conversations and practical support, enabling educators
to gain skills, knowledge and confidence to successfully
include children and families from CALD backgrounds.
The information and advice service can be contacted on
ph 3337 5427 or email bsa@mdaltd.org.au
For more resources on food and cultural inclusion visit us
on Pinterest www.pinterest.com/BSSMDA/ or Facebook
www.facebook.com/BiculturalSupportServiceMDA
1. EYLF pg 13.
2. Dr Donna Gabaccia, We are what we eat: Ethnic food and the making of Americans. Harvard University Press; 1998.
3. Christine Gross-Loh, Parenting Without Borders. Penguin Books, 2013.
4. Source – MDA, CSW Fact Sheets. Various CSWs.
5. UNICEF global databases, 2014, based on MICS, DHS, and other nationally representative surveys, 2009.
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IN THE LOOP