Over twelve years ago a group of parents worked to establish the first gardens here at Chevallum State Primary School. The gardens maintained the vision to entwine the children with nature, to deepen their understanding of the essence of life and to encourage them to discover the delights of food through the wonder of gardening. As many of you know this is a great idea but one not easily incorporated into the hectic curriculum schedule of a modern school. Yes gardening is nice but what can it give to a student who has unprecedented access to a cable-connected world.

Of course we are not the only school to embrace food-producing gardens and we kept in touch with the work of other schools through our permaculture and community garden networks. About six years ago we saw that Stephanie Alexander also understood the benefits of school gardens and took that extra step, that step we all wanted to take and she established a kitchen as well. How thrilling to have someone as well-known and influential as Stephanie to take up the cause and hit the headlines.

The opportunity came with the announcement by the Federal Government that they would offer the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden grant to all public primary schools. Lyn and I prepared the grant application and sent it in. And we were successful! So here we are at our first community meeting. This really is the start of our project and what I need to impress on you is this. To successfully raise this next generation of children we need to focus on what they are eating. We know that to change health outcomes in our children and the wider community we need to re-establish our relationship with how food is grown, cooked and eaten.