The Point Pearce Health and Wellbeing Program (Program) aims to promote health and wellbeing within the Narungga (traditionally spelled Nharangga) community through a series of educational cooking and planting sessions. The Program supports community empowerment and builds capacity around nutrition while encouraging active community participation and intergenerational connectedness.

With a strong focus on reinvigorating cultural connection and traditional knowledge through learning to grow and cook with native plants, the Program allows community members to participate at their own pace and within their own ability.

The planting session featured the instalment of raised garden beds and native plants in an existing community garden at Point Pearce to improve access to fresh produce. The raised garden beds are a unique design to increase accessibility, reducing the need for bending and leaning while allowing persons in a wheelchair or limited mobility to comfortably access the produce from a seated or standing position.

The cooking sessions centre around providing a space for the community to gather and nurture relationships while enhancing skills around cooking with nutritional foods and native plants. The cooking sessions have focussed on following simple and nutritious recipes using groceries that most households have readily available. One cooking session used multi-purpose kitchen tools to streamline the cooking process and assist participants who may struggle with using manual utensils.

Pairing both the planting and cooking sessions allows the community the opportunity to learn to cook with the produce grown within the community garden and provides the foundation for broader Program outcomes, including improving nutritional literacy which will reduce diet related chronic disease.

All educational resources and recipes created throughout the Program have been incorporated into a community cookbook which is an amazing culmination of the community’s participation, social connection and shared commitment to wellbeing.

The Program is made possible through the collaboration of Yorke Peninsula Council, Point Pearce Aboriginal Corporation and Flinders University.

For more information about the Program and opportunities to engage in activities, please contact Yorke Peninsula Council via admin@yorke.sa.gov.au.

The Point Pearce Health and Wellbeing Program is supported by an Age Friendly SA grant to Yorke Peninsula Council from Office for Ageing Well.