GROWING MIGHTY KIDS

Back in 2015, Paul Dickson and his wife, Anj, helped a local school in Papatoetoe to get their school garden up and running. Based on the success of this build, the Principal at Papatoetoe West encouraged Paul to support more schools and this led to the creation of the Oke Charity.

“The first school garden we built was at Papatoetoe West School which had a huge oak tree at the front of the school and the charity is named after this tree, with the word “oke" being the Māori word for the oak tree. Also,"oke" means to overcome struggle and keep going, which is apt when working with school gardens”.

Paul says that each establishing school garden costs around $22,000 to set up and run. “The value is double this, if you include all the hours that our amazing volunteers put in to build these spaces”.

The establishment cost includes everything from the raised beds, soil, tunnel house, garden shed, all the tools, fruit trees, etc, plus ongoing support from the ‘Oke School Mates’. Oke finds over $20,000 of the funding, with each school contributing only $1,000. Each school garden is built through a community working bee, with volunteers from the school community coming together to build the garden in just a few hours.

“Now, in 2024, we're working with 41 schools across Auckland and in the Waikato, with our 42nd school garden build taking place at Nukumea School in Orewa”.

By the end of this year, Oke will hopefully hit their target of building 15 new school gardens. By achieving this goal, Oke will have given over 25,000 local kids, access to an outdoor space to grow and thrive. And across all these school gardens, approximately 1200kg of fresh produce is grown each year.

These school gardens are not only used to grow food but also to assist with learning across a range of subjects from Sustainability to ESOL to STEM topics. A number of the involved schools now have pigs or chickens, and one school has recently set up their first beehive. The majority of the schools we work with have set up their own Pātaka Kai stands, so that they can share the produce they grow with their school community.

Over the last eight years we have learnt a lot about the benefits of school gardens and our gardens enhance both the natural and built environments. We love that we engage with school communities in order to make this happen.

Of course, kids learn about where their food comes from, but they also understand the time it takes to grow food and how to reduce and reuse food waste through composting. Financial literacy is easily taught within these spaces, along with most other relevant curriculum topics.

“We started working with Paku last year and we now include their Education Kete within our kit, to ensure the conversation is started with our little growers about traditional Māori gardening methods.”

It's incredible to see how Oke has grown over the last few years and the huge amount of interest we now receive from schools, is testament to how important our school gardens have become.

Our goal is for school gardens to be developed in all schools across the country and for them to be an integrated part of how kids learn and grow.

South Pacific Seeds believe in supporting New Zealand initiatives and kiwi kids. We are proud supporters of the Oke Charity and supply them with vegetable seeds that are grown by the next generation of food producers.

To stay updated with Oke, or to support the charity, you can donate and follow our progress and projects at www.oke.org.nz.