Manukau Parks’ work on the The Manukau Teaching Garden Project won it the New Zealand Recreation Association’s (NZRA) 2010 Outstanding Project Award at last night’s NZRA annual awards ceremony.
The project is a community collaboration among a wide range of people and organisations including Manukau Parks, City Parks Services, mentors, caretakers and volunteers. It uses gardening as an opportunity to address physical activity and nutrition goals through providing families with secure access to affordable food; and at the same time it supports the Counties Manukau District Health Board’s Let’s Beat Diabetes – Gardening4Health Initiative.
NZRA Chief Executive Steve Gibling said the judges especially liked the leisure education approach of the project and the innovation used, including looking at redundant sportsfields for future gardens.
“Give a man a plant and he’ll feed himself, teach a man to garden and he’ll feed the community. This project is a great example of people helping people,” Gibling said. He added that the judging panel was very impressed as well with the unprecedented scale of this new form of recreation with 2ha of garden area proposed, 400 plots available and 800 students annually.
The NZRA Outstanding Awards were presented during NZRA’s annual conference awards dinner, which was held at Wellington’s Te Papa National Museum.
“The awards are about thanking those people, and recognising those among them who raise the bar, develop innovative solutions and inspire New Zealanders to get active and healthy,” he says.
Manukau City Council Parks Ranger Varsha Belwalkar who manages one of the six sites scattered across the city told Indian Weekender she felt proud the project had received the award.
“We have had participation from Indians from Fiji, India, people from Bangladesh, South East Asia and of course Pacific and Maori families. It has really been a great experience to be involved in this project.”
Nearly two-dozen varieties of vegetables and fruits are grown at the gardens besides a colourful variety of flowers. While people take the produce home for personal use, many have been donating excess produce to a range of food banks around the city. “This has benefited even the community at large,” Ms Belwalkar said.
Indian Weekender had featured an article on the project in February this year.