It’s hard to believe The Root Cause Australian Tour has been rolling for four weeks now. It took us so long to actually get on the road, that the last four weeks have been a whirlwind. You can read all about our adventures travelling in our Family Tour entries – first 2 weeks and week 3.
This post is about our work in Newcastle to Transform Children’s Health. I guess you could say it’s our way of reporting back to you on our mission. So here’s our Australian Tour Newcastle Report.
Awabakal Ltd
We spent 2 weeks in Newcastle working with the Awabakal Ltd Indigenous Community. Our time was split educating staff, parents and children. During our 2 weeks we travelled to Glendale, Wickham, Fennel Bay, Woodberry, Metford, Gateshead, Raymond Terrace, Belmont and Singleton. We had about 220 actual fun and informative conversations about eating real food and understanding how most packet foods don’t help our bodies. We also developed a dedicated staff area on our website for Awabakal Ltd staff, so they have easy access to a host of downloadable resources. This way they can continue the conversations with the children and parents of their community. Also in development is a 3 month online Facebook and Instagram program to continue to reinforce key health messages.
Before I share the rest of this report, I would like to make a heart-felt thank you to Charter Hall who generously donated the funds to Awabakal Ltd that allowed Community to have access to The Mad Food Science Program™. Their donation has afforded this community with the gift of knowledge that will go on to help transform the health of this community.
Did our education programs work?
Yes is the simple answer but don’t take it from me. Here’s some of the feedback we’ve received from Awabakal Ltd and action shots of the education in action.
Feedback
“After your visit to our preschool we have continued to implement healthy foods by adding a variety of fruit and veggies to our morning tea basket. We have noticed some children trying new foods and not just the usual fruit that is sent in their lunch boxes. We believe now that the children can identify the foods that should be eaten and the foods that should be sent home. This is often discussed around the lunch table amongst the staff and the children.”
“Our staff here have also made some huge changes at what we are eating daily, there is a lot more fruit and vegetables in our individual lunch boxes. It’s funny when I Iook around and see staff reading packets of food and finding out exactly what’s in them, I think this has had a massive impact on the staff and we are now able to understand more.”
“Thank you for all that you have done in supporting our families at all our playgroups, most families we feel all gained knowledge from your workshops. I would also like to thank you for the positive feed back and follow up information I am sure this will help in the continued education and reminder for our children and families about making healthy food choices.”
“We made mini quiches for breakfast…made from our garden and pantry by our staff and kids. Here are the ingredients: Onion, Tomato, Spinach, Garlic, 4 eggs, milk, small amount flour, Creamed Corn. It was so delicious! Thanks for inspiring us to think about our food choices each day.”
Staff Taking Initiative
I am loving receiving photos of how Awabakal Ltd Staff have really taken on their learning and developed activities to continue the conversations with the children.
Staff at one centre have started collecting the packet foods that come in lunchboxes and are going to create a Mad Food Science Board showing the sugar and additives and preservatives in each packet.
Others have taken our rainbow template and created their own rainbow of fruits and vegetables game to reinforce to the children how the different colours of fruits and vegetables help different parts of their body.
And this one brought me to tears. A staff member felt so strongly about what she learnt, she created a whole kit to be sent home to the parents. She had the handouts and seed sticks our National Partner Worldwide Printing Solutions provide plus she had researched a whole host of packet foods and their sugar content and ingredients and created her own handout.
And then this one from the playgroup team. More tears.
Other Newcastle Events
Parent Event
We ran our first ticketed seminar for parents called “How healthy is hot child’s lunchbox?”. It was a fantastic night and about 22 mums came along and learnt how to take the stress out of packing lunchboxes, how to deal with fussy eaters, what does healthy really look like and how to read packet labels. Here’s what some of the mum’s had to say:
“A great talk to make one stop and reassess our food and habits regarding foods. Thank you.”
“Great information. A big eye opener!!”
“Wonderful informative presentation. Have taken away alot tonight.”
“I would love you to come to our school and talk to the kids, parents and teachers etc”.
Raising Awareness Activities
Our bus is our mobile billboard. We use it to generate conversations everywhere we go. In Newcastle we stayed at beautiful Stockton Beach Holiday Park. The bus generated loads of conversations with the people staying there and it was amazing the stories we were told by people about what was going on in their families, schools etc. Here we are making fresh rice paper rolls with some friends we made at the caravan park.
Radio Interview
Israel secured us an interview on radio 1233 ABC Newcastle with Jill Emberson. It was a great opportunity to share about children’s health and in particular what we were doing with the Awabakal Ltd community. You can read about it here.
Newcastle – We’re Coming Back
Since leaving Newcastle, we have had requests from schools and other parents to come back to Newcastle. This is not possible for a few months but we have altered our tour schedule to to come back through Newcastle in late March next year.
We’ve already had one school lock in dates to run The Mad Food Science Program™ for their 290 kids and we’re looking at hosting a wellness event as well. If you’d like to have us at your school or are interested in our wellness event, please email Belinda@therootcause.com.au. You could also fill in the how we can serve you form and we’ll contact you.
Tour Stats
These are broken into direct conversations and estimated impact. Direct conversations are the number of people we directly talk to. Estimated impact are the people we estimate we have touched based on the direct conversations we’ve had. The estimation is based on ABS stats of the average household consisting of 4 people. It does not take into account, how these people will go on to talk to other people and become a stand for health in their area.
Newcastle
- Direct Conversations – 266
- Estimated impact – 1,064
Total to date
- Direct Conversations – 1,816
- Estimated impact – 7,264
Our aim is to directly impact 100,000 people on Australian Tour. You can help us achieve our mission by spreading the word about Australian Tour, and if you’d like to see us do something in your region, please fill in the how we can serve you form and we’ll contact you.