Linda Weterman and Michelle Wī celebrate the beginning on the Maara Kai Roopu horticulture course. PHOTO ANDY CAMPBELL
A food-based training programme centred around Maniapoto Maara Kai Roopu will help whānau become adept at growing their own kai.
The 25-week training programme led by Akoranga o Te Whenua (Land Based Training) has 10 students enrolled but there is room for a few more students to join in the next couple of weeks.
“Usually in the first two weeks we will take some new people, it’s always best to go through as a group,” regional operations manager Linda Weterman said.
From a base at Maniapoto Maara Kai Roopu (MMKR) at Te Kūiti, tauira will learn about soil quality, seed preservation, growing and harvesting kai.
Manager Michelle Wī started the Maara Kai Roopu three years ago after she was made redundant at the Waitomo Caves.
With a lot of voluntary hours, donated materials and support from local residents, the garden donates all food produced to the Te Kūiti foodbanks and the Whānau Ora Community Centre, Womens Refuge and Hillview Rest Home.
“I’m so thankful this day has come,” Michelle said. “This has been three years of trying to get this off the ground. This will at least help me to be able to do some of the other projects that I have started.
“Land Based Training is so welcome here and I’m really looking forward to the fact that our people are going to learn how to grow.
“I’m really hoping this first class will start it off. You guys will be the revolution, to start everybody off growing their own kai. At the end of the day, it’s too expensive to buy.
“We need to be looking at the mental health side of growing your own garden and really, really pushing, because that is what we need.”
Maara Kai Roopu chair Layelin Stewart said when they started talking about Land Based Training, they spoke about the gardening side of teaching people to sow, to nurture and to thrive and restore and how the metaphor would extend to their whānau and within their homes and their extended families.
Mayor John Robertson and councillor Eady Manawaiti also attended the launch of the NCEA level 2 course, which will be a stepping stone to other training.
MMKR has attracted local, regional, and social media interest its establishment because the project was set up to help local residents.
Michelle has won a community good sorts television award, a Maniapoto Kawenata award and Kiwi Bank award for keeping the initiative alive and well and embracing locals from pre-school/ kohanga reo children to kaumatua.
There have also been visits from Members of Parliament such as the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, Angela Roberts and Barbara Kuriger, who all wrote letters of endorsement to support funding proposals and applications.
