A cup of community spirit, stirred into warmth and positivity, served with lashings of love

The way to anyone's heart is through their stomach, so it's little wonder Unity Housing's Our Community Cookbook project took out the Tenant-Led Initiative category at the ahi South Australia/Northern Territory: AHI Brighter Future Awards 2023. HousingWORKS gets a taste of it.

Journalist Sara Garcia once wrote, “unless you've lived in South Australia, you probably have no idea what Stobie poles are, or why they are so iconic to their home state. Stobie poles,” she continues, “are South Australia's own (almost indestructible) version of a power pole — and you will not find them anywhere else in the world, despite the inventor's best efforts.”

Like the Stobie pole, you’d be hard-pressed to find many places other than suburban Adelaide where a power pole has been used to share a recipe for a tasty dip within the local community. 

Born in 2022, the cookbook’s origins can be traced back to Unity Housing tenants, Giselle and Andrew, who wanted to create a free collection of simple-to-make but tasty and nutritious recipes to distribute among friends and across their communities. It was also a way of reconnecting people in the aftermath of COVID lockdowns through an almost universal love for food.

"You couldn't orchestrate this if you tried,” Trish says, as she explains how Giselle and Andrew were kibbitzing about the creation of a tenant-led cookbook at the same time Unity Housing had begun formulating their next five-year tenant engagement strategy and delivery plan. “It was just through happenstance and circumstance. We were running a series of tenant consultations and roadshows — catch-ups, coffee and cake… very casual conversations.”

She describes the catch-up session with Giselle and Andrew as a "nice, small, casual chat": “And the conversation went into food — and everybody in that conversation loves food. We talked about what we like to eat and our favourite foods, and it was here when Giselle said, ‘Why don't we make our own cookbook? Why don't we get tenants together and get them to send in their recipes and we can create our own?’”

With Unity Housing all-in on the project, a $10,000 grant from SA Health (Office for Ageing Well) was secured, and Our Community Cookbook was on its way to becoming a reality. 

Selecting the recipes that would make it into the cookbook turned out to be a little bit more challenging than its creators envisioned – but in the best possible way. So popular and highly supported was the idea, even Unity Housing staff wanted their recipes in it. Ultimately, though, contributions from tenants were coming in thick and fast, which meant a number of tough calls had to be made. 

“At the outset, we would never have predicted there would be such a significant spinoff. Our Community Cookbook is the gift that keeps on giving in a way.”

For Trish and the Unity Housing staff involved in the project, Our Community Cookbook has been a simple idea of immense importance. The most pleasing aspects: the project has fulfilled its aims to help tenants and their communities reconnect after the pandemic, and it can be easily replicated by other community housing providers.

“This has absolutely been tenant led through and through. The level of tenant engagement we experienced has been inspiring and we’re so proud that Unity's been able to support this tenant-led idea."

“The cookbook’s about sharing a passion for cooking, and this is a project that any CHP could run if you've got a little bit of money,” she adds. “[A community cookbook is] no secret as such, and we see lots of community cookbook examples in various forms available, so it's not our intellectual property – not by a long shot – but if we could help another housing association, or any other not-for-profit, or anybody really, we'd be more than happy to do that.”

Copies of Our Community Cookbook can be downloaded from Unity Housing’s website.