Mana Kai Mana Ora

Goals

Grow a sustainable local food system.
Chemical-free, healthy whenua; cease use of glyphosate and maintain public areas with chemical- free alternatives.

Click to download a copy of our food sovereignty & security plan.

Tā Mātou Moemoeā Our Vision

A kai secure and well-connected community

By 2030 Western Bay of Plenty communities will be kai secure, where all people will have access to healthy, culturally appropriate, and affordable kai and able to connect with an active Kai community network to learn, share and grow kai for ourselves and to share with others.

Our local food system will be environmentally responsible and resilient supported by ecosystems that are flourishing because of responsible land and water stewardship.

Kaitiakitanga

We are the stewards of our takapū our homeland. It is our role to ensure that we leave our community place and space in a better state for future generations.

We recognise the fragility of our natural environment and the impacts of climate change. Physical, social, whānau, community and spiritual wellbeing are all interlinked with the wellbeing of our environment.

Kaitiakitanga means that we engage with integrity with the sources of our kai so that we uplift their mana and vitality for the future.

Kai

Kai has a more integrative meaning. While it means food or produce as a noun and consumption as a verb, Kai connects us to Papatūānuku, to each other, to our tūpuna and our mokopuna.

Kai embodies, derives from and gives to our relationships. A Māori understanding of kai encompasses food in the context of an ecosystem of whakapapa, identity, whānau, social, community and environmental relationships from the past, present
and future.

Kai belongs to all, is to be created by all, and needs to be shared with all. To have a system that champions kai is to have one that champions community and champions whenua.

It is for these reasons that kai has been utilised in Mana Kai Mana Ora, as an evolution to a holistic lens when referring to food sources and systems.

Aroha

To align to the life breath of another, without judgment, control, or personal agendas. Compassion, charity, love and care have been the significant drivers for our responses to food insecurity within Aotearoa communities.

When acts of charity and aroha are organised into systems such as a food bank system, they can lose connection and relationship from the centre. It is knowing the innate mana within everyone and everything and not diminishing it.

When aroha is present it binds kaitiakitanga and interconnectedness together. It is the intersection of all these principles. Relationship is core and collective, principled action towards food sovereignty for all People before profit. This is fundamental to Mana to Mana practice.