(gentle music) - There's still an awful
lot of families that fall between the gaps, or
don't know how to find the services, or if they
do find the services, find that they don't fit the criteria. The unexamined assumption
that if you are hungry, it's your own fault, you can't manage, or you've got drug
addictions, or whatever it is, that narrative that a community that's not even directly involved
with that family will hold that also absolves you of
having any kind of participation or response to those that need. If I believe that you don't deserve, I don't need to take any kind
of action to share with you. I'm quite interested in a
world where we all believe in better stories of one another. We know from the stories
that come through the door of The ReMakery, that things are really, really hard in our communities,
but who wants to sit and talk about how hard
it all is all the time, when we can maybe be
creating some joy and magic, laughing at each other or
growing some food together? It just feels like talking
about things in a different way. (happy music) Common Unity's approach
to giving to the community is all about being alongside,
and having those conversations with community that they are
part of what we create here. We didn't want to parachute
any services or anything in from other places, that
this is just simply something that we create for
ourselves, with one another, responding to what it is that we see for ourselves in this community. - Oh, it's lovely! - Would you like one?
- Oh no, I think that's great. You won't lose your kid with that. - No!
- We have a community kitchen. We have a little food co-op and grocer, and really importantly, we have the cafe. We have sewing and knitting. (happy music) - Two done. - We run our own honey enterprise here, recycled bikes, art, lots of art. Our really big focus is our food hub, and our food hub is made up of Urban Kai, which means that we run
12 to 14 urban farms across the valley and into our prison. I think the things that
we are addressing here in this community are
around quality of food and the sustainable creation of food. What we have learned is
that often that when people are on really low incomes,
their food choices are not wide at all, and we wanted the
opportunity to flip that. Our food production and how we grow food is a pretty simple model, really. We put farms into either
the backyards of people that have partnered with
us, or into facilities that are needing as much help
with wellbeing as possible, for example, our local prison. We run a big project up there, and also at the residential care facility that houses teenagers that can't be living in
their homes right now. Social housing tenants can
also apply to have support to put in a farm in their backyard, and we do that really deliberately,
because we want to grow the strengths from the hardest places. - This is mine and my daughter's home. Here's another one for you. - Yay. - Today we've got volunteers
from The ReMakery, the Saturday morning
garden crew who are coming to do some work, and help me
keep this place maintainable. I usually just take what I need
for the day or for the meal. Everything else is seeded,
and taken back to The ReMakery for seedlings, plant
sales, that sort of thing. They often come and do a small
harvest of whatever's ready to go for the kitchen
that's at The ReMakery. What about these ones? Oh, these ones are big. I was working full time
for a couple of years, and I got into the habit of
being too tired to make dinner, and it was take-aways, and
I felt unwell in myself, and I know that it would be
affecting my daughter as well. When this came into our lives, starting off with tomatoes and lettuce, it's simple to make a salad, and that really enticed Clara
into, "Oh, maybe I wanna try everything else that's in the garden." Better opening them than I am. The first time I gave her
a broad beans straight out of the pod was maybe like, a month ago, and she just, "Can I have some more? Oh, it smells so good," like
she wants to rip them open. "Can we save some for
dinner, please?" (chuckles) The impact that it's had on us financially has been really incredible. Last year, I saved $230
on my grocery bill, just from not having to buy vegetables, and for some families, that's
like what they're looking to save on their power bill. - [Farmer] Eden, would you like this? - Yeah, actually...! (laughing) Something like this is really
important, to teach children that produce doesn't just
come from the supermarket. She has learnt a lot, and I
take pride in that as a mother. - It's a little one.
- Stunning! - I have met so many wonderful
people through this project. I wouldn't have gotten
through a lot of this without some help, and that's
what community's all about. (happy music) - We're just heading around
the corner from The ReMakery to Riverside Farm. It's within walking distance, but I've just got a lot
of stuff to deliver today. - We have a farm manager,
Hannah, and she takes groups of people to various
sites throughout the week, and they grow food. - Oh look, this one's already got fruit. - Wherever we grow that food, Hannah delivers an educational
program alongside that, and whatever food is surplus
after the families have taken what they need comes back to our kitchen. (happy music) - This garden is a partnership
with Oranga Tamariki. We're using their land and facility. This is the closest garden to our kitchen. If the chef says, "Oh, I need some salad," we can pop down here and get it. Everything you see is recycled or donated. We use cardboard, we use wool, we use basically whatever we can find. The volunteers are amazing. We couldn't do what we do
without the volunteers. There's really no such thing
as the typical volunteer. You get people that
want to learn to garden. You get some people that
are doing community service, we get people that have been
gardening all their life, and just want to garden with other people, or share their knowledge. You want them to be the same size. - That's the [...] plant. 'Cause that's what they look like, too... - Although it's a voluntary thing, people come because they enjoy it, and because they get a lot of benefits. (happy music) This is Bruce's house. Bruce's neighbor Gordon came to us. He knew that Bruce had
this awesome backyard, but also that Bruce
needed a bit of support. He's a elderly gentleman,
he has mobility issues, he's very limited in what he can do, and a garden this size, it's a liability. You basically have to pay
for someone to mow it. This is what the garden used to look like. It was waist-high weeds, dock. One of our beautiful volunteers
weed-whacked the grass, so we just strimmed it,
put down the cardboard, put down the wood chip, put the potatoes and the pumpkins in. This garden has only
been in for five weeks. Speaks for itself. This is what you can do in a
backyard with a few people, a bit of know-how, and
some community spirit. - [Julia] How's everything looking? - [Prison officer] Not too
bad, just coming out of that winter mode, really ah?
Not a lot happening. Ground's still cold. - My parents were just
the most extraordinarily hardworking, beautiful people. My father worked at a
prison that was a farm, and spent most of his
days out with the men, and they would grow
food for the community. - [Prisoner] It's taken
me a long time to get something to grow in there. - [CUPA volunteer] Look's lovely. - [Julia] Because his
literacy was not great, he couldn't write his own reports. - [Prisoner] These are all ready. - [CUPA volunteer] Look
at your lettuces, yum! - [Prisoner] These need to be
picked before they get eaten. - My upbringing was
spent, in my early years, listening to him narrate
the things that had happened during the day, to my mother. - [Prisoner] This usually
is covered in watercress. - How amazing that you're
able, this is so amazing. - [Prisoner] All this is ready to go now. - My bedroom was beside the living room, and I grew up listening
to extraordinary stories, stories of why the men were incarcerated, stories of their families. - [CUPA Volunteer] Look at these. - Yeah. See, and the cabbages
are looking good too. - [Julia] By the time
that I got to high school, I felt quite radical in my ideas about why it was that
some people struggled, and some people didn't, and for me, that great sense of injustice
was born at that time, and has never really abated. - [Julia] Have you ever
grown vegetables before? - [Prisoner] Yeah, I do grow at home. This is my first time growing cauli. - That's amazing, and look, oh wow. That must feel so good. - Kia ora, I haven't done
a garden for a long time. - Yeah. - Got a bit lazy on it at home, but when I get out I'll be doing it again. - Good. It's kind of addictive right?
- It is, it's very enjoyable. - Yes. - [Prisoner] Soothes the mind. You're free when you're out here. (happy music) - There was a part of my
upbringing that just felt so deeply frugal, and there
was never anything new, and everything was homemade,
and there was always a sense of seasonality in our world. We only ever ate what it was that we grew, or fruit that we picked
from our own fruit trees. When I eventually got married,
and had more children, all of those things were
really important to me, so I studied horticulture
and permaculture, and I had a background
in natural medicine, and there was kind of
this really beautiful convergence point with all
of that coming together. But I don't think any of
it was really realized until I became a single
parent, and was all of a sudden on my own, and had my
children living on a benefit, and tasked with being the best
parent that I possibly could on the lowest income that you can imagine, and wanting them to have the
experiences that I had had. Of course, that meant all
of that food production, but even more than that, it
meant that I needed to connect to community, and really learnt
strongly through that time that actually we're not meant to live as single human units. We are meant to be creatures of community. During that time, I also had a really
significant cancer journey, and to be faced with this
incredibly scary thing, to want to live so badly because you've got
three beautiful children that need you so much. While I was sick, me
and my children arrived at this beautiful, tumble-down
cottage that we moved into, and this is where my cancer
journey really took place. I just had such a commitment
to rebuilding our lives, and getting better. We lived kind of tucked away
in this gorgeous little forest, and right beside us was
another little cottage, and in that cottage was this amazing woman whose name was Bunny, and
Bunny was the principal of this little school. She would come over, and sit
with me in front of the fire at night when I was really sick, and she would tell me
stories of the children that she cared for at that school, and encourage me to be
well, because she wanted me to go and grow a garden
with them. So I did that. And that's how the Epuni
School garden kicked off, a big old soccer field, a sense
of newness from being sick, a sense of connection
with this amazing woman who was just championing
me, and telling me that I could do it,
just to get on with it. (birds singing) - [Julia] Look how big the trees are now. - Whoa, it's grown so much. - I know, look at that
enormous olive tree now. Remember that this was the
very center point of the site, and that's the very first
point that we grew from? - Yeah, you measured it
out with a string and rope. - We did measure it out
with a string and rope! We didn't have any money,
but we had lots of heart, and we had a really strong
relationship with the school, but more importantly, we had
this extraordinary buy-in from all of the children
that grew really excited about the idea of being farmers. It's so foresty now. That's a kiwi fruit. - Is that a kiwi fruit?
- Yeah. I think we had about $25 when we started. We wanted to build our
garden in such a way that anyone could look at
it and immediately think, "I can do that at home, because
it hasn't cost any money." It was a very tight community of parents, and I didn't live in
the immediate vicinity, so there was mistrust for
sure, and not everyone wanted to come and help in the garden. I had had the misconception that actually, this is such a fun project,
everyone will want to come, so I had to learn why it was
that people maybe didn't. I also had to think of some ideas to really engage the community. - Shall we go plant some swamp
plants for the butterflies? - Yeah!
- Cheers. - Okay, follow me, and I'll show you where we're putting them. - When I finally did get some momentum going with the parent body,
I learnt that the reason why they didn't want to come
and dig up that field with me is that life was really hard,
and I made it look even harder by sweating, and lugging,
and wheelbarrowing, and that they just actually
needed a soft place to be. - Put it in between our
fingers and tip it gently. - [Julia] That's when we acquired the use of an old classroom
onsite, and began to work in a different way. - There we go. - Beautiful, real good. - We were running cooking
classes, sewing classes, knitting. By this stage, there was
beekeeping classes going on in there, and particularly
around our honey and sewing, some of our enterprises
were starting to become quite commercial, and we were able to look at employment opportunities,
and we realized that actually we had outgrown our space,
and we needed a place to be. Just over the road, there was a old, disused plaster factory, and we didn't have any money, but we made the approach to the land owner and asked them if they would
partner with us for a year, and give us the building for no money, and become a stakeholder in
our project, and they said yes. (soft music) - Every person can be creative.
And I really, really enjoy guiding through the process of creation. All the products that we
make, we sell it online, or downstairs, you can see it in the shop. The community donate. We work by donation. They're donating machines, materials. We receive fabrics - 100% cotton, banners from old advertisement, and leather, buttons, thread. We have textiles to create new things for the next five years nonstop. We try to design new products every week, and we also work with specific
needs for the community. I received an email from
a nurse, she has this idea to go to the schools, and teach the kids how to brush their teeth. So I designed a prototype
for her out of banners that you can put toothpaste
and toothbrush, waterproof, and can have our label, and you
can put the name of the kid. The idea is to keep
going designing products with repurposed materials. Materials that otherwise
would end up in the landfill. We welcome volunteers, because
we think that it's important that you donate your time, you learn a skill that you
will use all your life, and at the same time, we
are a social enterprise, so all the profit that we
make end up in the kitchen to produce more food for
more kids that are in need. - My eldest son, Joseph, is
a really keen mountaineer, and he runs the camping
library at The ReMakery. My daughter Belle has spent
hours and hours and hours, right from her earliest years, doing this kind of stuff with me. My son Izaak works in the
kitchen, and he gets to work alongside a lot of the
mamas from the village, and that's the best place
for a young lad, I think, and I love how they are helping shape him. - The majority of the
food that we get here is grown locally, or sourced locally. Everything is either a
donation from someone, or it's grown by someone in the community. From there, it's our job to
take that and harness it, and put it into the places that count. We've got five different schools that we're donating
lunches to, Kokiri Marae, and then the cafe, and a few other places. I manage the kitchen here at Common Unity. I was living up in Auckland
and working as a chef up there. Going into lockdown, I lost
my job, and had to move back down with family. I come from the wonderful
world of fine dining, or the not so wonderful
world of fine dining. Fridays and Saturdays you
could only do seven courses, which winds up being
sixteen things that you try, and if you get a wine pairing with that, for one person, that's $345.
Obscene amounts of money. Food that I would never really
get to experience myself, and yet I'm cooking it for other people. The whole essence of that just feels fake, and it doesn't feel real. Something that we've really
tried to do here is make everything accessible for
everyone so that anyone can come into the cafe
and have a nice meal, and it doesn't have to be expensive. During winter, we're selling
soup by the bowl for $3. This is the kind of food that I would cook if I was inviting someone into
my house, whereas up there, it's the kind of food that I
cook to inflate my own ego. I don't think I'm ever going to go back to fine dining ever again. - I just love coming here. I'm donating my time, but
I'm also gaining heaps by just meeting people
here, and the lovely, friendly chatter that goes on. A wee while ago, I was
really sort of quite down, and felt that life really
wasn't all that worthwhile, and coming in here, and
mixing with all these people, and just seeing all the
good things that they do, and also being able to
contribute, it's very healing. To be able to help someone and see them come out of their struggles. - This is a question that we should be deeply understanding of, because essentially this is
the essence of Urban Kai, creating impact around food
resilience in our community. We're not a food bank. The traditional food bank model
looks like people applying to have support for emergency food. They often fill out forms,
and mostly are given boxes of food that they don't get
to choose for themselves, and what we hear from our
community who have been recipients of food parcels is that
does not much to increase their mana, or their sense of
themselves. So we developed another system of being
able to give away meals. We think that as an organization,
it is far more impactful to be taking on the responsibility
of feeding ourselves, and the government's job in
that is to come alongside, to support and enable us to
do what it is that we know is the best thing for our community, rather than to have a service
or a truck deliver something to us that has done nothing to enable the action of collectivism
from that community. - Hi, Mum. - Hi, guys. How was your day?
- Good. - That's good. - The trick is just to
go as deep as you can in the holes that you make. COVID was an extraordinary time for us. In he goes. Beautiful. We heard that most of the
food banks were closing. The phone began to ring, and we realized that actually there was
something really significant happening in our community as people were not able to feed themselves. So we got an exemption
to open our kitchen, and we took on firstly, the
database of our local food bank, and began to cook and
deliver the meals ourselves, and realized that the need far outstripped what we were able to do. Do you know how many meals
your mum has cooked this year? - [Child] No. - Your mama, this year,
has cooked 37,000 meals. - [Child] My dad's older than that. - Your dad's older than that? (laughing) We realized, too, that
Kokiri Marae was in exactly the same place as us. They had all of the distribution,
and they were connected to all of the families
in need, so by us opening our kitchen, and collaborating with them, we were able to just start pushing out 2000 meals a week together. - Two spaghetti, two baked beans. I'm gonna put that in there. Going to grab a Weet-Bix. - Did you start with the people
who are normally part of- - Yes, yes, and they put
out the word that, you know, Kokiri was providing all this food, and they just come. - ...all the additional
families that you found through that period of time,
it made me realize that actually, probably some of the data that we have as a city is quite askew. - Taking the food to the families, we really began to see them, because families, usually,
in need, will tell you what you need to know. But when we dropped food
off at their houses, we saw 22 people living in a two-bedroom house. We saw people coming out of the garage. We saw three generations of
families in little houses, 'cause they had nothing to hide, 'cause we were taking food. That's all we were doing for them. We weren't asking them questions. We weren't asking them
why are you big families living in a small house, you know? So there was no barriers. You know, I've worked in the
community for over 35 years, and I thought that I knew our community. During the COVID, I began to realize I didn't know them at all. - If a whānau is coming for food where there's lots of
family violence in the home, then that's the priority, right? About trying to get through each day, and keeping themselves safe. They can't think any further than that. They can't think of, "I need
to be thinking about growing my own kai," or that kind of stuff because, you know, that's their world. "How do I get through this
day, safely", you know? "How do I keep my children safe?" That's the focus. - There is healing that
needs to take place before people feel that they
are activated into moving from crisis, into feeling
powerful and enabled. Yeah, and I don't think
we understand that enough. Those that don't suffer in
that way do not understand or have enough compassion in that space. - So have you done all the
referrals for today, Kelly? - I've done all the referrals for today, though we've got seven that
have already come through from Facebook, and then
we've got all the requests coming through via email
for tomorrow's deliveries. - Plus the ones that'll come
over the 0800 number, right? - [Kelly] Yes. - The majority of our
pātaka is run by volunteers. The good thing about this
is that it's a very easy kaupapa to get involved in, you know? People are drawn to the fact
that they wanna help people who are hungry. We've got a 24-hour phone line that is manned by one person. She's always at the end of the phone, and through our Facebook as well. They just only have to give
us their details around, you know, their name, their
address, their phone number. That's all they need to tell us, numbers in their house and that's it. We don't need to know
anything else about them. It's enough that they're hungry. (upbeat music) - This is our mara. We named it Te Mara O Ngā Kai Manu, which is an extension
of our pātaka kai here in Wainuiomata. I grow all the kai here in the mara, and it goes all into our
pātaka kai, into the food boxes that go to our community
to families in need. I'm growing on less than
an acre of land here at the back of St. Peter's Church. I also have an orchard out in
the front, so I grow trees. - [Person in group] How
many spuds have you got? I'm observing a lot of
benefits from the community. They come in, not just hands-on to help, but they also donate a lot of
our resources that we need. It gives people in the community a space to come into and contribute. Honestly, when you see
them work, you can tell that they have a purpose. Long-term goal is our wellbeing. What I'd like to see in the
future vision is everybody being well, mentally,
physically, spiritually. We're more than just a mara, yeah. - A thriving community is when a community can look after itself. It doesn't have to always
rely on the supermarkets to provide them with food. That's what a thriving community is, and also a community that works together for the same common goal. - I spend a lot of time
observing the mental health of our community, the staff,
volunteers, and people that come through our
building with the stories that they bring, and all of the challenges in that mental health and wellbeing space, and that's got to be symptomatic
of a lack of connection to not only ourselves,
but also each other, but also to the natural world. - There's real reward in taking something that was abandoned, and had
it, making it useful again, and then someone's going
to get enjoyment out of it. We take donated bikes, and
we repair and refurbish them, give them a bit of a
tune-up, and a safety check, and that sort of stuff, and
then we sell them on for parts, or we give them to people in the community who are in need of some transportation. Sometimes we send them to refugee groups, and we donated a bunch
to schools recently. Just kind of give them
a new lease on life. Keep them out of the tip. - Yep, that one can go... spare wheel for somewhere else. - Got a couple of good volunteers
that come in regularly, and they do great work,
and that helps us keep up, 'cause we get swamped. - I enjoy coming here. It keeps me occupied. When Jago said to me, "Oh,
hey, Paul, we're gonna take 10 of these smaller bikes to Rātā Street School and
give them to the kids to ride, man, that was just so
awesome to see, you know? Brought tears to my eyes seeing kids actually get to ride a
bike that's come from here. - Yeah, well just wind it up tight... - Jago's always made me welcome here. So does everyone else
that's at this place. I'm proud to be a part of this. - We sell bikes for as cheap as $25, and the ones that we sell for more help to fund those ones in a sense, you know, like going for parts, and labor, and all that sort of stuff. It is really rewarding that
people get to get a cheap bike, and get from A to B. I felt like I was a real
taker, like I was just doing a lot of taking in life. I started looking around thinking about, "Well, how can I give back in life?" And I started volunteering
here on the bikes on Wednesday nights, got to know the crew, really enjoyed it, got
sort of entrapped here in the goodness. I actually got medically retired from what was a very stressful role and ended up coming here, and being employed, so it's sort of a bit of a safety-net, land-on-my-feet scenario. I was actually getting
really ill at my last job, and they were really
supportive, but the requirements of the role, and the demands of the role, couldn't be altered. There wasn't the flexibility
in that space to do other things. I was a specialist
in particular subjects, and I was just needed in those areas. Deadlines were tight, quite
a bit of pressure to get a good end result, and you know,
be timely about it as well. And when you're mentally not well, those sorts of things are
a real struggle to achieve, and I was there for 15
years, so at points, it was really good, but towards
the end there, not so great. It was really refreshing coming here. It's been a huge, huge change for me. It wasn't just support at
work doing the ReCycled Rides. I mean, they extended it to
where I'm in this space now, being able to paint, being
able to hang paintings upstairs and stuff, and exhibit, do murals, all sorts of really cool stuff that just would never
have been on the radar. It's pretty incredible. Wouldn't have happened without the actual breaking down, I think. The staff here all have an understanding, and an empathy for the
things you're going through, and look out for you. You feel more valued. You feel that your work is
valuable, and you feel like an individual and a person
rather than the number, I guess. (gentle music) - Thanks! I find that being a part of a community isn't just about meeting people. It's about getting to know
them, and sharing your passion, and them sharing their passion, and everybody growing together. It makes life a lot more fun, and it definitely makes
the bonds in the community a lot stronger. - I think the space is good
for mental wellbeing as well. I've had all walks of
life come through here, and I'm really grateful
to cross paths with them through this mara. But at the same time, to seeing how they leave, really
leaves a mark in my heart. It has a ripple effect that
will continue to their kids, and their kids' kids, and so on. - Imagine, you get a whole street full of skilled people that come
together and share their skills. My gosh, what a difference
that we would make, ah? We'll have more community
come, we'll have them sharing their skills with us,
and our skills with them, just like we do with Common Unity. There's another way of doing things, and when we have communities
that can do that, what a difference we will make, eh? What a difference we will make. (happy music) - Our jobs would be done here
if we didn't need to get up in the morning and necessarily go to work, because the community was
simply doing the growing, and the feeding for themselves. How we know if we are
truly successful is simply to dismantle this facility,
and embed everything entirely in the community itself. And I think it's such a
beautiful mission to wake up, and come to work every morning and think, "How can I do something in
a way today that enables me not to have to do it tomorrow because someone else is
doing it for themselves?" (happy music)
