We aim to Provide pupils with access to healthy, fresh kai and the skills to grow, cook and preserve their own fruit and vegetables.
we can transform children's relationship with food if we give them a taste of what's possible.
Healthy Kai in Schools project
Project outline:
The Healthy Kai in Schools project will create a community food co-op and social enterprise that will up-skill youth and feed Wairarapa families who struggle to afford fresh fruit and vegetables. It will give children the skills they need to grow and prepare simple, healthy meals based on fresh wholefoods. Using the hall kitchen and developing an outdoor kitchen space we will teach cooking skills to small groups, working our way through the school ten students at a time. The project will use unwanted food scraps from local businesses and homes to build the soil at our school farm based at South End School Carterton. Reaching out to members of our community who may be lonely or isolated or in need of a feed we can build an inclusive society and empower our youth to lead social change.
We have already secured funding from Organic NZ, Carterton District Council and the Roy and Jan Mace Foundation to set up a tunnel house and shade house to start propagating seedlings and fruit trees to support our fruit trees in schools program, community fruit harvesting and our seed to sale project. These projects coupled with our already established South End School food forest, outdoor classroom, and composting laboratory provide the infrastructure to embark on setting up a local food sharing and edible education co-op.
As part of Healthy Kai in schools during the next three years we will expand our food production by building our composting system, market gardening and fruit tree propagation developing the plan for a school farm and centre for sustainability designed by students from Kuranui College, Makoura College and South End School in 2017 in a year long project funded by MBIE.
South End School Potato harvest
Growing and preparing food are essential life skills that we can all benefit from. At South End School we are building community resilience by enabling intergenerational skills sharing, our Thursday morning gardening team consists of a team of local adult volunteers that give up their time to work alongside school students, making compost and growing fruit and vegetables in the school food forest and teaching gardens.
Our Healthy Kai in schools project brings together our food forest, community fruit harvesting, seed to sale and fruit trees in schools projects to provide healthy shared kai for our community….
Here one of our expert mentors Odette Rowe explains how many common weeds are edible and full of nutrition, Kalani is demonstrating how to make a green smoothie using feijoa and banana to sweeten up the wild edible greens such as dandelions and chickweed.
Hands on learning teaches essential life skills, we also learned about how to recognise which plants may be poisonous or not good to eat and the rules of wild foraging.
Several members of our school community struggle to feed their whanau, specifically fresh fruits and vegetables are often difficult to afford. Teachers at South End School have noted that a number of students are coming to school without having had breakfast and with nutritionally poor lunches, if any. Our projects such as community fruit harvesting Wairarapa aim to connect with people who have an abundance of fresh fruit and/or are unable to harvest their fruit trees due to old age or ill health. We hope to share kai with our community and also to share skills - enabling youth to learn the skills to grow, cook and preserve healthy nutritious and simple plant based meals. We have partnered with local expert mentors within our community and also organic farms and chefs to share their knowledge with school students, youth and unemployed volunteers to build a community hub where we can host community meals, working bees and workshops.
Inspired by the success of similar projects and social enterprises such as Cultivate in Christchurch and the CommonUnity Project in Epuni, Upper Hutt, our project will deliver kai, edible education and skills to those who need it while reducing our waste and building community resilience. Agriculture is one of the most important economic activities in our region and by teaching students the skills to turn organic waste into healthy soil and kai we prepare them for future employment and get them working to support their community now. This type of community based agriculture pools resources and builds stronger connections and networks within the community.
Project outcomes:
Working in partnership with local businesses, cafes and Carterton District Council zero waste coordinator we will set up a local green waste system - collecting food scraps and coffee grounds from businesses and private homes in council funded green wheelie bins and recycling them into compost and diverting them from landfill. We will build a custom bike trailer to use for weekly bin collections.
Students will learn from local expert mentors the skills to grow, cook and preserve fruit and vegetables grown by the project and donated by community fruit harvesting Wairarapa.
Regular cooking classes will provide food for students who come to school hungry or without lunch.
Community workshops will teach composting, how to reduce and sort organic waste, fruit tree grafting and propagation and market gardening techniques.
Weekly working bees in the food forest and market garden where volunteers will be rewarded with a share of the kai produced.
Community meals, where students are invited to share their skills and cook for members of our community.
We’ll ensure this project is sustainable by setting up a local food coop. Members will pay a koha to join and then be entitled to a share of the produce plus bulk dry goods at wholesale prices. Public workshops will fund support staff. An “eat my lunch” funding model will allow sponsors to gift a school meal with every lunch they buy.
If this project is successful at South End School there is great potential for expanding the model to other Wairarapa schools. We already use the teaching garden as a resource for schools across the region.