Koori Kitchen

Yesterday, I took part in an AIESEC in Sydney project called Koori Kitchen. It was created by a quite visionary and hard working member, Tina, with the objectives of:
- Preserving aboriginal culture and proud amongst aboriginal teenagers from Redfern, a quite marginalised suburb in Sydney nowadays;
- Improve their knowledge about nutrition and pleasure for cooking, so that they can have a healthier diet and a better life.

In the process I learnt:
- Aboriginal communities still have a strong sense of group; so we should never highlight too much individual accomplishments;
- They are generally very quiet, and just let you interact with them once they trust you;
- They face very important social problems: poverty, drugs addiction, bad nutrition, discrimination, among others. As a result, their life expectation is significantly lower than other Australians;
- In my perception, Australians don' recognise them as legitimate Australians, seeing aboriginal communities as another minority group present in the country.

This Saturday, as part of my role, I was around while the kids were cooking, giving some instructions but mainly taking pictures. It was quite a nice experience to interact with them and realise that people are at the same time very equal and very unique. Very equal in a sense that they just need a inspiration, trust and a little bit of skills to do extraordinary things; and unique in the sense that their actions, dreams and contribution will always be different, once genetics, temperament and previous experiences shape each one of us differently.

Comparing to Brazil, the Australian aboriginal communities can be translated into:
- Our indigenous communities, also extensively disrespected by the colonisers, with less legal rights until recently and facing important social problems nowadays;
- Our poor communities, quite marginalised, with fewer opportunities and not as many role-models. The difference, in this case, is that in Brazil we cannot use an ethnicity as synonymous of poverty, even if black people are statistically poorer and face heaps more discrimination.

Thanks for the opportunity, guys! See you in another Koori Kitchen Saturday!