Healthy Eating Hub shining bright in Fremantle

Hawaiian bringing nutrition education to Freo

Our Sunshine Harvester nutrition education facility in Fremantle came to life in 2022 thanks to our long-standing partnership with Hawaiian Property Group, bringing a fresh new approach to nutrition education. 

We’ve partnered with Hawaiian since 2013 primarily through the the Hawaiian Giving Box Christmas campaign and corporate volunteering.  Now, together we are not just helping to deliver food to those in need, but also ensuring households are adequately up skilled to make healthy food and nutrition choices.  

The overall aim of our Healthy Eating Hub is to achieve sustainable community wellness, assist in social engagement and relationship building and continue to support families facing financial pressures that affect food stress.  

The topics covered include label reading, budgeting and meal planning, food preparation on a budget, healthy snack alternatives, cooking, debunking fad diets, Australian Guide to Healthy Eating five core food groups, serve sizes, sugar in drinks, eating out healthily, homemade vs. takeaway and food safety. 

The Healthy Eating Hub has so far delivered 22 programs and held 38 sessions with 302 participants. Our oldest participant was 99 years old which just proves you are never too old to try something new! 

Feedback from the program has been overwhelmingly positive, with a recent participant who is a support worker who attended a program with their client wrote the following note, “I just wanted to send you a huge thank you for mentoring Megan, myself & the rest of the participants, through the recent classes. We really enjoyed them, and I encourage Megan to use the skills she has learnt every day. She still needs prompting or a reminder on some things but is miles ahead of where she was before the classes. It really cemented positive behaviour into Megan. 

She has enjoyed classes so much, it’s given her the confidence to try and grow vegetables in her little courtyard garden, just so she can eat them and eat healthy like you said. Bless her I just love seeing her telling her Government Community Services house staff off, for choosing cereals that are bad for her breakfast, instead of healthy options. She even told the supervisor that she should do the course and learn herself.” 

Overall feedback from participants who took part in programs delivered to date has shown a 9.7 out of 10 overall satisfaction.  

16 separate organisations have taken part in the program including four Local City Councils, the Department of Health, other charity organisations, recent migrant initiatives, a women’s shelter, and youth programs targeting disengaged youth. We have also created a close partnership with the City of Fremantle to organise programs throughout the coming year tailored to youth and older adults over six programs. This will directly engage Fremantle’s most disadvantaged and the general community.