We have been able to secure 7 hectares of beautiful whenua on a short term license, 5 minutes drive from Te Pā in the red zone to scale up our composting and māra with Matua Keith and Matua Bailey. We were also successful in securing some funds to launch our own Koanga Kai Whānau composting and māra initiative!

What does that mean you ask. Red zone land is available for short term lease while it eventually gets transferred from Crown ownership back to the Christchurch City Council. So an opportunity arose for us to secure a significant and beautiful block of land, 7 hectares (almost four times the size of our current site) literally 5 minutes drive from Te Pā. The site is also culturally significant, adjacent to one of our old pā sites, Te Oranga and a kainga nohoanga, Pohoareare. The purpose of the license is to support the regeneration of the land through more composting and māra kai. It means we can get the whole whānau involved in developing communal māra and composting systems. It means we can do a whole lot more than we are currently doing on site without chewing into anymore play fields. It means we can return "our" waewae to "our" whenua that may have long term potential. It is very exciting!

The license is only for one year and was signed by Nōku Te Ao Charitable Trust. We can not build on the land, well at least not in the short term, but we do get an opportunity to check out whether it might have long term potential. We plan to do a karakia whakamāmā on the whenua in the first week of June with all our tamariki and rangatahi from Nōku Te Ao and Te Pā to coincide with Nōku Te Ao's 19th birthday and Te Ahikaaroa's 28th birthday! We seem to like doing significant things as we head into Te Pūanga and Matariki!! 

We have also been successful in securing some funding from the Koanga Kai Fund newly launched by Te Putahitanga that will enable us to launch our own whānau composting and māra kai initiative across both sites. It will include hands on learning and monthly wānanga with some of our resident experts, Dr Matiu Payne, Dr. Jamie Ataria and Bailey Peryman to name a few, for the whole whānau. Watch this space for more pānui about what we are planning!!!