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The new Ōtara Mara Kai community garden is a "non-plot" allocated garden for the Ōtara community. This community garden is managed by kaitiaki who live in Ōtara. A portion of the harvest goes back to the Ōtara Kai Village social kai store for re-distribution back into our community, some used to make free community meals via the OKV Cafe and the rest to the wider community. We want to feed, teach and empower our local community via maara kai. In our community we have also found many of our local Māori residents are disconnected from Te Ao Māori . Many do not know their whakapapa, are disconnected from their marae and often don't speak Te Reo Māori or understand Te Ao Māori . One of our objectives is to help expose our local Māori through old traditions of food and growing, how to eat well and nourish the body and soul through Te Ao Māori practices.
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.This is a way for whānau to join with other whānau in doing something creative and productive. Mara Kai can contribute to whānau developing and building on skills that could lead to employment. It is also a way in which we as parents can encourage our tamariki and mokopuna to engage in healthy, educational and cultural activities. It is about encouraging collective responsibility for our health and wellbeing, while at the same time preserving our respect for our whenua, our land - the ultimate expression of kaitiakitanga. Mara kai enables the transference of traditional knowledge and practices from the experienced to the inexperienced and will again contribute to strengthening the foundation of our society as whānau.
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But there are other, less-tangible but just as significant benefits - healthy outdoor activity, learning skills of planting, growing, harvesting and storing fruit and vegetables. And of course there are all the community and social benefits - a network of friends, people with knowledge passing it on to those who are keen to learn, crops to share amongst whānau and the satisfaction of cooking and eating food we have grown ourselves.
All the activities involved in setting up, tending and harvesting Mara kai, bring us closer together and enable us to remember the teachings of our tipuna and the way they lived. Our tipuna worked together, they shared what they had, and they ensured younger generations were equipped with survival skills. This made them strong enough to survive the challenges of their world. |
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