Co-designing and delivering nutrition work with First Nations communities, with Mel Townsend

Mel talks about her time working with First Nations communities co-desiging and delivering food and nutrition program within her role at Children’s Ground. Along the way, Mel reflects on some of her best moments and biggest learnings giving us an opportunity to consider participatory approaches to community and public health nutrition. 

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CREDITS

Host: Sophie Wright-Pedersen

With thanks to Mel Townsend for her time and thoughts

The Foodies in the Field podcast would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was made, the Turrbal and Yuggera people, as well as the lands from where Mel was speaking and where you may be listening from today. We pay respects to elders both past and present and acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were the first foodies of this nation. 

Transcript

Sophie: [00:00:00] Welcome to Public Health Nutrition from Foodies in the Field, a podcast showcasing stories from passionate foodies about who they are and what they do. I'm Sophie Wright-Pedersen, your podcast host, and on today's show we have Mel Townsend. Nutritionist who recently worked for Children's Ground in Central Australia.

I've known Mel for a few years now. We graduated from Wollongong University around the same time, and we would occasionally run into each other, but where I really got to know Mel was in Alice Springs. Where we worked collaboratively together on a few projects and became very good friends. Mel has to be one of the most spontaneous people I know.

As you've come to find out in this episode. A quality that has led her to having some very unique and exciting roles through her career. And if there's one thing I got out on talking with her, it's recognizing that there's no harm in giving something new a go. Hi, Mel, welcome to the show. 

Mel: Thank-you. Thanks for having me.

Sophie: So I'm gonna start off by asking you, cause you've done a Bachelor of Nutrition Science through the University of Wollongong. So, I wanted to ask, what led you to wanting to study nutrition science as a degree? 

Mel: I was thinking about this morning that in year six in our yearbook, when like a few people from my school year asked me what I wanted to be. I've said I wanted to be a, a professional food taster. Which I feel like then, and it's still now, I still have the yearbook, but I feel like then that translates to, you know, loosely a food scientist. Only in that I did a science degree majoring in nutrition. 

Sophie: Yeah. And has any of your work ever involved food tasting? 

Mel: Oh, sadly, no. But I really did entertain it for a while. I thought when I was first looking to study nutrition, when I was changing from my education degree. I was looking at potential jobs and I know people kept saying, oh, you should go and work for Nestle and you could just develop food products. But you know what my stance on that is? I wouldn't wanna do that for work cause I do that in my life and I love it. 

Sophie: Yeah. You're just a, an amateur food taster. 

Mel: Yeah. Exactly. 

Sophie: That led you to looking into nutrition and then was that it or was there anything else? 

Mel: I started an education degree, PE teaching, and it was kind of just an accident that I'm speaking to a friend who started in uni and she was going through that course guide. I just happened to be going through it with her.

I, I think I wasn't very engaged in my teaching degree. I was looking at nutrition and dietetics as a combined degree. There was the undergrad and then you could do a masters. And I ended up just going to speak to one of the, the head teachers from nutrition and dietetics. And honestly, within probably a day I'd just changed courses and I was so excited.

Sophie: From there, you went down the community nutrition path, which is why you're on this podcast. 

Mel: I'm not sure when it really came to be, but over the course of my two to three years of my undergrad in science, I spoke to a lot of friends and then people who were in my course, and the new dietitians or had worked in dietetics roles. And I suppose I got a bit more of a realistic feel for what dietetics would be and my perspective at the time was that basically the clinical stuff could wait. It was, it was that, it was feeling like clinical wasn't my scene for the time being. I think I was always much more, I guess, focused on social health, which then translates really to community health, like the kind of health promotion being out in community.

Sophie: Yeah, okay.

Mel: I mean, I, I learned that over time, like it was, that was many conversations and volunteer work and probably a lot through my study as well is getting a real feel for it. 

Sophie: And you mentioned that you'd done a bit of volunteering. What types of things were you doing? 

Mel: Everything was through, one of my tutors actually, she was working for Nutrition Australia and she was talking about, they needed, oh, you know what? I attended with one session. It was a supermarket tour that kind of got me into it. I was so in, I, I think I was just so interested that they, they ran supermarket tours because as in, this was the time where it was like, all about nutrition label literacy. And I remember one of the main lessons on the tour was the tuna aisle. She was saying, here's basically what all the labelling means and what does pole and line caught actually mean? What does a company have to do to put this on their label? And I really loved, I probably hadn't given it that much thought before. Cause that was really early days in my degree and I just had not, I never put the time in. So I really enjoyed that.

Sophie: Because a lot of it is regulated, like most of it is regulated on food packets, and you can't just put anything on there. And so you went on a supermarket tour, but then did you end up volunteering for Nutrition Australia? 

Mel: Yes, I did. Following that, I signed up as a volunteer. And I, pretty sure, basically [00:05:00] my only duty for that short period of time was some kind of computer admin work. Something about reading, something nutrition related. And it was for me, very much kind of this stepping stone of, oh, this is great, let's get involved, and then, you know, pop it on your resume. 

Sophie: Oh, absolutely.

Mel: Yeah. It was great. 

Sophie: That kind of leads into what you've done, like what type of roles have you done as a nutritionist? 

Mel: I moved up to Sydney cause I'd worked in hospitality all through my uni degree. So I picked up a cafe job. Was pouring coffees, and then decided I should do something more nutrition focused than a cafe, although it's still linked. No, that was great. Again, very glad that I did it, but I probably sat in that a little bit too long for my liking. But as a supplementary nutrition activity, I started volunteering with Cancer Council, New South Wales had a nutrition program called Eat It to Beat It.

Sophie: Oh yeah. 

Mel: And it was all around, they'd done a bunch of research about primary school aged kids, and they knew, I mean, the population on a whole doesn't eat enough vegetables, doesn't quite eat enough fruit. But, so there was this big evidence-based program running in primary school, so targeting parents of primary school-aged kids, and I basically, jumped onto that as a volunteer and they called it a program facilitator.

We basically memorized presentations, turned up to kindergarten orientation halls, you know, big halls full of hundreds of parents of, nervous, little kindy kids . It was super cute. But what was nice is that I, I do feel like a lot of those parents, it might not be their first child going through kindy. But they're very, in my experience, very open and ready for any support, information, resources you can give them.

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: So I would run 10 to 20 minute presentations around Healthy Lunchbox ideas. You'd get to chat to the parents before and afterwards, and then there were more in depth workshops that you'd run with small groups of parents around fussy eaters. So workshops around some problem solving and strategies around fussy eating in young people. You were exactly what they named you. You were a facilitator, so really you weren't bringing the information. You were just kind of facilitating this conversation and discussion around what people have tried, what's worked, what hasn't. So you'd come with a little bit of a structure and you had a few resources, and you would kind of set it up in terms of obviously the environment, but also the conversation. Like you'd get it flowing and say, you know, it's super common, it doesn't have to be a really big stressor. Here are some ideas and then you open it up to what have people found worked for them. 

Sophie: Yeah.

Mel: And so often the goodness from those sessions, I think like a lot of health promotion that I've been involved in, the goodness comes from that sharing of information and, um, teaching each other as opposed to that dryness of just talking at people.

Sophie: Did you learn anything from what those parents shared? 

Mel: Oh, absolutely. Consider my imposter syndrome. I'm a, what? How old was I? I'm a 25 year old. Haven't had kids. I'm with these epic like Metro Sydney mamas. But yeah, absolutely. I learnt, I probably learnt possibly more than some of the parents sometimes . Often the examples I was giving were examples that people have given to me.

Sophie: I did the intro to solids workshops, some of them in Alice Springs. And so all the new like six month old babies. And I'm the same, like, I don't have a child. I've never really been in my adult life, I don't really know a lot of people with children, that young. Like now I'm starting to but at the time, this was, you know, when I started, it was probably four years ago now.

Mel: Yeah.

Sophie: And I was like, oh my God, I have no idea how to introduce solids to kids. And we had a presentation and the other dietitian I worked with trained me, like upskilled me. But then I would eventually go into these sessions by myself and the things I learned off these parents, I, I would sometimes sit there and just be like, that's genius, like, I can't believe that you, you know that. 

And then I would then go into the next session, like a month later and be like, you can do this. And all these women's faces would light up. Or you know, usually women, sometimes it's dad. And I'd be like, I feel so smart. Um, this isn't even my idea. But yeah, I think it's really important within anything that we do. Like you said, being a facilitator. And it's so much more engaging and, and people do learn more when they actually share things. 

Mel: Yeah, absolutely. 

Sophie: And then I guess from that, cause you volunteered on that program, but then you eventually went to work for them for, was it six months? 

Mel: Yes, I did. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: Doing a very similar thing except you were more on the organizing end of things, but I used to do really, cause I enjoyed doing the facilitation so much. I wasn't really supposed to run them. Like the [00:10:00] ideal would be you'd organize the volunteers to run them. But I just loved doing them so much, so I kept allocating myself. So actually that probably a little bit answers the question earlier where that was probably another catalysing point that I realized how much I was being drawn to community-based work. But for one reason or another, the program wasn't funded again. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: Uh, so I finished that role after six months, and I don't believe it's been picked up since. 

Sophie: I remember when that got canned. That was such a shame, but, um, that happens.

Mel: It does. Yes. 

Sophie: There's a few of those stories and it is really unfortunate when you know that it's having, you know, a big impact.

Mel: Yes. Particularly because if you look at like, there were such big numbers in terms of reach of that program. And I know even over, you know, the 10 years, they had noticed quite significant like jumps in consumption of fruits and vegetables. And so it felt, and it felt like this kind of, the more effort you put in, the more you get out of it in terms of outcomes and unfortunately it wasn't prioritized.

Sophie: So yeah, that is unfortunate that it stopped. But then I guess, where did you go from there?

Mel: I knew my job was finishing up in a few weeks that year, and I did. I jumped on the internet and I typed into Seek "Nutrition Jobs Australia". I swear it was one of the first or only things that came up was an organization in Alice Springs wanted a nutrition team leader or something like that. I didn't even know what that was. And I applied for it and I ended up interviewing a couple of times for it. And you know, when you are in that phase with the job where you've applied for it and you decide you want it, and you decide, look, this is going to be my job. I think this is my job. I'm gonna make this happen. Uh, and then I didn't get it.

Sophie: Oh no.

Mel: But I ended up doing, to tide me over, ended up doing some research assistant work with my old Uni, the University of Wollongong, and that was all tied into nutrition, physical activity. Again, it was great to get that experience of um, seeing what was out there in terms of nutrition work and what programs and what research was happening.

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: And then Alice Springs happened. 

Sophie: Because how did that come about? Cause you didn't get the job but you still ended up moving. 

Mel: You know, you would've been an example of giving me advice. You should email this person. You should call this person. I have a contact at this person. I did that for six weeks, and by that I mean I was at the pool for an hour in the afternoon I would make calls or send, I'd sent a lot of expressions of interest to people. And you know what was again, like reflecting on it now. I would speak to people and say, here's my experience. Here is my, you know, realm of interest. What do you think, based on what you know about the town, the community, everything? What, what would your advice be? And over and over with everyone I spoke to, I kept getting a very similar, I'd say top three people to reach out too, top three organizations. So I sent off expressions of interest about, you know, whether it was volunteering or paid work. I did specify I, I'd probably need to earn money at some point. I heard back from an organization called Children's Ground. They asked me to come in just to meet a couple of them, just come in for a chat and it just went from there. Yeah, and they basically created a role around my health promotion, nutrition study, and background. 

Sophie: Wow. 

Mel: And I sat in that role for the three years that I was in Alice Springs.

Sophie: Before we get into what you did at Children's Ground, do you wanna give a bit of a background as to what is Children's Ground? What are they all about and what's the foundation of how they as an organization work? 

Mel: Just a disclaimer, I will butcher this so anyone who doesn't know what Children's Ground is, please go and check them out on their Instagram or on their website. They're quite remarkable. But basically Children's Ground is an education reform organization. So it's a not-for-profit, it's focus is on education. So it's all First Nations run. First Nations led. It was started by a couple of Arrernte old ladies in Central Australia. They'd been wanting it for years and years, and it finally kicked off probably a decade ago now, really. But the Alice Springs arm is relatively new. Basically that First Nation's understanding of health as opposed to Western Health, it's very holistic based. So it's health being tied into education and it's health being tied into family and connection to country and individual. You know, when you're thinking about a child, it's like their [00:15:00] spiritual health. So basically Children's Ground is an organization that compared to our mainstream education systems is trying to prioritize and privilege First Nations learning. So, often teaching in language, teaching out on country, and trying to support Western and First Nations health practice. 

Sophie: Yeah. Wow. Do they have like a curriculum? 

Mel: Yeah. So some of the leaders at Children's Ground have created an Arrernte curriculum, to be culturally appropriate and relative to the environment and all relevant to their children and what parents are wanting the children to learn, as well as tying into that Western framework of literacy and maths. So myself, a non-First Nations person. But I've got a background in Western trained science education.

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: So I can bring that perspective, I guess, that nutrition focus from that realm. But I'm not going to teach these young people about their cultural health factors. I'm not going to tell them stories like their families do and speak to them in their first language. Yeah, so I, I guess Children's Ground has this really beautiful way of bringing those two sides in and very much prioritizing that First Nation's edge, but also using Western Health as like a complimentary arm to it as well. So their focus is around education, but also one of their focuses is health and wellbeing, and that your health and wellbeing is influenced by so many other things that are rotating around you. And so the part that I could contribute to is, for example, access to healthy food. Education around healthy food, making healthy foods.

Sophie: And so when you were working for Children's Ground, how did you even decide where to start with all of that? 

Mel: Yeah, it's an interesting one because it felt very much like a start-up when I began. Basically my role had been created and therefore I was on the go building up what my work plan was within, you know, a lot of community consultation as in all these programs for Children's Ground, family driven.

So I'm not just thinking of ideas of things and just slapping them on the program. It's very much speaking to people, networking, speaking to these parents, speaking to my colleagues and saying, what do we need? What do the kids need? What do the kids want to eat? What do the families like to eat at home?

Or it might be in terms of that education of nutrition. What do you want your kids to learn about? And the consultation, just, I guess in practice, and this is a lot of our training, in terms of systems. It was very much like that has to be ongoing. That has to be a constant discussion point and throwing ideas out there and seeing how it's a bit, it's a lot of just back and forth of, oh, how can I facilitate that?

Or what resources do we need for that? How about we try and have a go at that next week when we're back and it might not work every time, and that might take a lot of workshopping. But it's, there's involvement and there's engagement. 

Sophie: Yeah, definitely. And it's a big buzzword at the moment, but it's that co-design process.

Mel: Well, and I guess on that Children's Ground in their structure and their staffing, the whole ideas privileging First Nations knowledge and also it being so led by Aboriginal Arrernte people. So, I guess as a Western staff member, I sit in that co-design where you mostly sit in that behind the scenes part.

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: And so it's actually not, in many ways, not up to you in terms of delivery. It's more, Hey, how can I support that? I can bring this arm of knowledge to the table. But if you think of general health promotion, like that's going to be so much more effective, delivered from, say in this context, a family member or a First Nations educator who's delivering that message. 

The reality of it was my role very much circled around supporting the kitchen operations. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: So they were things like, probably the most technical I got was working on updating the nutrition policy, which I did with your support at one point. 

Sophie: Oh good. Yes. I think that was just before I left Alice Springs.

Mel: Yeah, I think it was. So that, there was a lot of food ordering as part of my role. Children's Ground when I started was running early years sessions. So every session might be, say, an average of 20 parents and kids. And so each session that happened would get an esky and they would get a hot meal cooked for them.

And then there'd also be sandwich ingredients. There'd be celery and carrot sticks with hummus, and there'd be chopped fruit and there'd be yogurt and all these things. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: And so that was maybe [00:20:00] two or three groups when I first began and then it expanded. I think it's sitting at about five now. But that happens multiple times a week.

So essentially it's this kind of massive canteen project, particularly when you consider the transport out to what are often on country trips. You might be driving around out for hours and providing this nutritious food for families. And that just by default, you know, everyone has to eat. And that really took the priority so much of the time because it's such a big project. Then it's, it's so great cause you see these little ones and the exposure to the foods and seeing their parents eat the same foods and everyone, you know, it's like hosting a family meal really.

Sophie: Yeah. And you talked about the nutrition policy that you implemented, but even before that, were you kind of informing, oh, maybe we could put like, maybe a few more vegetables in, or we could swap this for that, or was that already there? 

Mel: There was definitely a pretty solid policy already existing. They had a really good practices when I started. And I was just able to tweak a few things. So for example, ratio of, if you think the two main elements in a lot of these foods with meat to vegetables, for example. 

Or like say those really nice things that you can kind of upskill people with around how many people do you think you're cooking for? 40. Okay. And we would develop these together where you go, okay, well how much meat would that mean we need to give them? How much veggies? How much of that starch? Like any kind of rice or pasta. 

And then also just little, you know how nice like the substitutes are, like, you know what yogurt you're choosing is such like an easy switch.

Sophie: Such an easy switch. And so you kind of touched on it a little bit before. But from that program, did you see any kind of impact or outcome? Maybe formally, but even informally, just from doing that for quite a long time? 

Mel: Yeah, I mean all those kind of broader evaluation things, for sure they're seeing even like baseline. Knowing because of all this food is being provided every single day to hundreds of people. Knowing that then that's enabled X amount of families, X amount of children access to healthy foods or a nutritious meal provided.

But then I guess on a smaller scale of stuff I noticed was more the changes over time with say habits and, you know, anecdotal, little titbits people would come back with saying, oh, uh, this cool thing happened last night. You know, like my son, he kept asking to help me chop up everything. So I had to bring him a stool over and was helping me chop the veggies and he's you know, he is being like, put the trees in the curry and she'd been making something that she'd made at Children's Ground ,so it's familiar. And her boy who's seen her prepare food at Children's Ground before was wanting to get involved, as we know children do. And I don't know, just this lovely learning environment.

Sophie: And those trees that he's referring to?

Mel: Oh, the broccoli. 

Sophie: Were there any other types of programs you were doing through Children's Ground in that role?

Mel: We were able to do health promotion within these early years sessions. So often they were combined with another health member. For example, like myself, bringing that nutrition edge and then we had a social and emotional wellbeing counsellor. And we might have gone to an early years session and we would bring the health activity that might be, you know, it could be fruit and veg identification.

It might have been, you know, the social emotional checking in with yourself. Or what could the potential for that was getting, like families needed to be involved and yeah, a lot of upskilling in that area. 

Sophie: Like upskilling community members?

Mel: Yeah, I would say so. I think as Children's Ground continues to grow, they just do such a wonderful job. Ben in his interview with you, he was talking about that there needs to be more, you know, like nutrition specialists, Aboriginal nutrition specialists that are part of these families and really understand the realities of what choices people are making and why they're making them.

Sophie: Like you talked about Children's Ground does have this kind of framework around its social determinants and a more holistic health and education kind of perspective. Did you ever do something that maybe you knew it would have an impact on nutrition, but maybe not as directly as, you know, giving nutrition education sessions or providing food?

Mel: Definitely. I think a huge fraction of my role there was what I'd call social support. That workplace was great with a really open acknowledgement that getting people to these education sessions, even getting, if you think of from like someone getting to their workplace in the morning to earn money to give to their family so that they can provide that week.

There's so many factors that go into that. You know, it might be access to lunchbox food in the morning that's stopping someone, getting their kid on the [00:25:00] bus to get to school. So that way they can then come into work. And Children's Ground was really supportive with really understanding that there are all these factors.

So very willing to support you as an employee to then support these families, to do all those little logistical things that are much, often, much harder than they need to be. So that was a big part of my role that I loved actually. 

Sophie: And you can see how much of an impact that would've had for people like you've just described, how that all intersects with everything in our lives, like nothing's just done in isolation. So when we want people to do one thing, which might be, you know, eat healthily, you need to consider all the things that get the person to that point and their family. 

Mel: And like within helping all those linking activities, it's like that's kind of when you get, even in terms of relationship building, that's when you get some really good time with people to potentially influence a bunch of health decisions in the way of encouragement. 

Or you know, I might be picking up someone for work that morning and I speak to them and they don't have any fresh bread to give their child a sandwich. And so it's very easy and it was so nice to have the capacity and means to go and grab a couple of quick lunch items, be able to just, you know, opportunistically I was going there anyway, they've got themselves sorted out. Their child can then go to school and they can come to work. 

Sophie: And their child can go to school and be attentive and alert and actually engage. 

Mel: Absolutely. And then of course, ideally you wouldn't want that as a repetitive cycle, but you'd want that then to say, hey, the support is here. Absolutely. Firstly, the access to money to then buy that fresh bread is provided because they're actually able to attend work, but also there's more education around, you know, you can have informal chats about easy stuff to store that doesn't need to be fresh in the cupboard. Or even just chats about preparing things, helping people work out logistics of their often very complicated lives. I always really enjoyed that kind of informal health promotion that was very socially based.

What Children's Ground really taught me is how to work flexibly like that. And to broaden your perspective a little bit.

Sophie: Definitely. I think the way that I started thinking about food security and where can we work and how can we work in this space is we need those programs. We need that immediate food relief. We need that because people are hungry. And people aren't eating the types of foods that maybe they need for their bodies to grow and develop, especially when we're talking about children.

Mel: Yeah.

Sophie: But then we can learn from engaging with these people through those programs or through other mechanisms what is contributing to how they got here in the first place? And some of that is quite big, like very structural embedded within our society. But some of that is things that we can work around, but that we can't maybe do immediately. And so then you start going, oh, okay, there's this pattern emerging where, you know, their fridges turn off or like fridges stop working because they're old.

And then you start going through all of these kind of cycles of, okay, well what programs or what projects can we do to try and fix those things or put mechanisms in place to alleviate some of the pressure coming from those things? So that people aren't always going to be reliant on food relief. 

Mel: Yeah. 

Sophie: And it kind of sounds like that's what you're talking about, where of course you're going to go buy bread for people so that they can go to work and their kids can go to school, but then you go into like, okay, well let's prevent this from happening again as much as possible. And that's where you kind of move up that ladder. 

But you need all of that happening at the same time. You can't be just focusing on, we're just going to do food relief because like you say, we don't have the capacity for that. 

Mel: Yeah, absolutely. 

Sophie: But we don't have the time to let people go hungry to be working on these other big projects without having that food relief.

Mel: Yeah, exactly. 

And then ideally it's like Children's Ground working across a 25 year plan. So the idea is these little babies now, in the future hopefully won't have these food insecurity issues. But yeah, you're right for now, you can't actually just leave it and go, oh, we don't have capacity for that. Like, it's not, it's not realistic at all. 

Sophie: Absolutely. And, and I think like it's actually amazing to hear that they have a 25 year plan. I cannot think of many organizations that have a 25 year plan for health. Like when you're looking at government, for example, you're looking at maybe a three year plan. Five years maybe. Only because like the turnover of government is, it's a political cycle. 

Mel: Yeah, exactly.

Sophie: I'm assuming they chose 25 years because that's like a generation type model. But even if you think of these kids, just by having the access to that food and like the ramifications on their growth and their development, everything.

And even it means that these kids are maybe [00:30:00] more attentive at school. They have better focus and like you say, their parents, you know, can go to work and all this kind of stuff. And that means that they're more likely to finish school. 

Like I'm completely extrapolating here, but you can see just by this early intervention and by having these programs in place in a generation's time. Yeah. That might be where we end up. And that would be so fantastic to see. But we do need, within that 25 year plan, you need these immediate things, but we also need those really long-term, how are we going to break down these structures?

You've done a lot, Mel, and you've worked in some very diverse contexts and with different people in different places around Australia. And I just wanted to ask, what have been some of the biggest learnings or some of the best moments that you've had along your career path up to now? 

Mel: You know what. You see, the thing that pops into my mind that I was lucky enough to learn really early when I first moved to Alice Springs. And I think this is applicable to a lot of roles that you could sit in, in this realm. Is that you are just a visitor. And I suppose we all, a lot of us are just visitors in a lot of ways, but you are just a visitor and that's something, say a food program or a role that you happen to be sitting in. It should be able to exist without you and when you're gone. 

And it took me a bit to understand what I know of it now, and I still could learn a lot more. But, looking at your work with that lens as well and being able to say, look, yes, I want this system to be able to be better. And yes, this part frustrates me and I want to change this and I want to add to this. But always trying to make it so that anyone else could sit exactly where you are. I think that's quite a humbling thought as well.

Almost that feeling, at least where I was working where it's like, this is not your space. As in great that you're here, but this really longer term. This is not your space. Do you know? 

Sophie: Or it shouldn't be? 

Mel: It shouldn't be. Exactly.

Sophie: When you're saying it's not your role. Or it shouldn't be your role. I'm assuming you're kind of saying because you're not a First Nations person working for a First Nations organization with First Nation communities. That should be a first Nation's role. 

Mel: Yes, absolutely. 

Yeah, and you know, this actually probably links into one of, I guess the thing that I associate with a lot of pride in the efforts that I put in while I was there. Is that I was able to see with one of my colleagues. She's epic. Her trajectory was always going to be epic, but to see, to stand beside her as she developed was really, really cool.

You know, when you can just see someone flourish and it's because of all those little things that we were just speaking about. Where you go, they have been supported enough, but also empowered enough to support themselves. And to see then her attend, a couple of people attended the Food Summit on behalf of Children's Ground and just had a great time. You know, was able to come back and tell us about all these insights and what, what they learned and what sessions they enjoyed and who they spoke to about Children's Ground and really having a lot of pride around work. And then you can see in someone a lot of pride around who they are in that work place. And even outside of that workplace. 

Sophie: Yeah, and I love hearing these stories because I think these are the things we don't necessarily record. Like when we are doing formal program evaluations. Because these are those good news stories that we really need to recognize within our work. And maybe just take a step back and reflect on that we are having a big impact. It might not be. The number of vegetables that increased or the number of people that attended your session, but you've had an impact in some way because someone came and someone listened and, and if you listened to them even better.

Mel: Yeah. 

And even the depth of that. Like learning and that carry on health promotion. Cause I think of this person that I used to work with and think about their family unit at home and how many people I know without a doubt that she influences in her home. 

Sophie: Absolutely. 

My last question for you Mel. Is where would you like to see the future of the field of Public Health Nutrition or, you can go broader than that. But where would you like to see the future of it go?

Mel: You know, I was thinking about in terms of that theme of upskilling people, and particularly in the space I worked in recently. Is upskilling First Nations people into these roles. In my case, I think about the very specific conditions that I went to university, and then that makes me think about how unrealistic that is for so many people.

I've seen it done really well [00:35:00] where there is flexible learning environments and there are tailored courses for people and it can work around their lives and their commitments, and it can be supported by their employment. I would like to see that happen. More broadly. 

Sophie: I totally agree with you. 

Mel: I don't know why, but my mind when you asked that originally went to the Central Australian Nutrition Network, where I had a lot to do with you, Sophie.

But that I was involved in, over my time. Something like that, where as a non dietitian, I felt really, I loved going to those meetings. 

Sophie: Yeah. And a bit of context, those Central Australian Nutrition Network meetings. That's where all of the dietitians and nutritionists and anyone really interested in that space.

It was very much nutritionist and dietitians the invite for. But we would say like, you know, I remember you emailing me and saying, can I bring these people along, the Aboriginal health workers. And I was like, of course you can. And we would all come together. So there was, you know, government organizations in our positions, which were the public health dietitians.

And then we would have the hospital dieticians as well. And then we would have the Aboriginal medical service dietitians and you guys in your organization, and NPY Women's Council, which was the nutritionist there. And even Purple House had a nutritionist for a little while and they came along. And it was, it was this really beautiful kind of network where we just met, I think it was once a month. We would just kind of talk about what have we got going on and maybe how can we collaborate within this space and how can we learn from each other? 

And we would do an hour of professional development. And I think, yeah, I'd never really experienced that, like informal and intimate kind of meeting of all the people working in the space.

Mel: That whether or not there needs to be more like external to dietetics, more groups like that.

Sophie: Yeah.

Mel: Maybe that can build up people's engagement and upskilling in this forum. That is, you know, once you meet people it can be a little bit scary to start with. But once you meet people and you get to know what these meetings are. They become really quite joyful and it feels really supported. 

I'm just thinking in terms of my colleagues, how much something like that could be so be of benefit. Even you get to meet people, understand their work a little bit and then it just makes it so easy. And this is just networking, isn't it, where it makes it so easy to go?

Sophie: It is. 

Mel: Oh, Sophie would know that. How about I call her and ask if she thinks our menu is whatever, or, you know. I want it to be much more so it integrated with the services. 

Sophie: I'll wrap it up, Mel, by asking your favourite food experience because we're all foodies here. 

Mel: I think coming from a really big Filipino family. I just think all the best food experiences is like big, shared, everyone's bought one to three plates of food and it's all very random and it's like, you know, best case is this huge dining table, or at least a lot of pillows that people can sit on and just all share food together.

I just think it's the best. It's like, it reminds me of my mum's side family Christmas. Where it's like five different versions of pork on the table and there's like a bunch of salads and everyone's talking about dessert as they're eating the mains. And it's just, you know, this very, very joyful event.

Sophie: Yeah. 

Mel: That's kind of like my ideal. I think it's so lovely.

Sophie: Oh, I'm kind of just sitting here drooling, like imagining.

Mel: You should come to next family Christmas. 

Sophie: Oh, if I can invite Mel, I'm there. I'm flying Brisbane to Sydney on the next flight. Like that just sounds phenomenal. 

But thank you so much Mel, for coming on the podcast and for sharing everything that you have today. It's just been such a journey and we've all learnt so much from listening to what you've had to share. 

Mel: Thank you so much for having me. As always. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. 

Sophie: Good luck with whatever comes next. 

Mel: Thank you. I've done the thing again where I've moved somewhere without a job.

Fingers Crossed.

Sophie: So thanks everyone for listening. We'll put some links in the show notes to Children's Ground and anything else that we talked about in the episode. Remember, we're on Instagram and Twitter if you'd like to get in touch or ask us any questions or even share it with people you think might be interested to have a listen.

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