STEPHANIE ALEXANDER

Kylie Kwong celebrates the individuals helping to grow a stronger community. This month, we meet chef, author and original cook's companion, Stephanie Alexander AO.

- ANNA MCCOOE & KYLIE KWONG

Tonight, Stephanie Alexander AO wants you to sit around the table to eat. She hopes you will be joined by family or friends, that you'll break bread together, pass the salad (preferably plucked from your own garden), discuss the world. But don't just do it for Alexander, or your own enjoyment; do it for the greater good. The acclaimed chef believes the country would be a better place if we all prioritised cooking and eating together in our schedules. "That's what I do, I bring people around my table. We all have a lovely meal, sometimes simple, sometimes not. A lot of conversation is had in that environment." But Alexander goes much further than simply encouraging better dinner habits. She has also spent her career giving us the tools to act on her advocacy. This brings us to the two stately letters following her name, AO, or Officer of the Order of Australia, appointed to her in 2014 for her positive impact on young people via the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.

The seeds for the foundation were planted in 2001 alongside a pilot garden at Melbourne's Collingwood College. This was in reaction to the early 2000s rhetoric about unhealthy kids, with Alexander believing an enjoyable program of growing and then cooking ingredients in schools could help. And it did, with the foundation launching in 2004. “The kids loved it,” she says. “Kids who had never experienced dirt were keen to have a dig. They were keen to make pasta, shovel the earth. It was such an effective way to engage these young people.”