Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Essay

Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden (SAKG) is a non-profit organisation that runs kitchen garden programs in many primary schools throughout Australia. The program is designed to provide us with sufficient knowledge, motivation, practice and support 2 to help us and also make sure that the program is effective and a good experience for us.
Stephanie Alexander is a highly regarded food educator who has been named an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO). She is an author of fourteen books, chef and restaurateur. She developed her kitchen program due to three reasons:
• She wanted to pass her knowledge and experience written in her books to people of all ages, not just to people who read her books. She wanted to persuade
As a result hundreds of schools were built all over the country2.
This program is funded by many people but the main principle partner of SAKG is Medibank Community Fund. A media catching partner was Chyka and Bruce Keebaugh when SAKG joined the Sculpture Garden Café 3 .The other partners and supporters include Boeing Australia, Percy Baxter Charitable Trust managed by Perpetual, IMC Foundation and Neutrog Fertilisers.
It is also funded by schools, government, corporate partners, Philanthropists and individual donors who are interested in this program.
This program is directed to primary school children to deliver a range of skills relative to food education. Primary school children are the main candidates because they learn healthy kitchen diets from a young age. As a result they gain knowledge about eating nutritious food even when sufficient access to food is not available and continue to eat healthy throughout
The evaluation proved that SAKG were a success and her aims were accomplished. The main findings of the evaluation was that the teachers adored the program, therefore they assisted willingly. Similarly the method of teaching is enjoyable, for example working in the gardens was a very effective method. Hence the students willingly cooperated. As a result to this students mentioned that they would try cooking simple meals at home and start planting vegetables in their own gardens. An unexpected finding was how the program effected the home environment. It improved non-academic learners and children with challenging behaviours5.
SAKG was awarded the 2014 Honorary Fellowship by Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) Victoria for her service to food