Give the gift of growth
Help a child develop essential life skills
Your donation will empower a child in Aotearoa New Zealand to whanake (grow), hauhake (harvest), whakarite (prepare), and whāngai (share) fresh and seasonal kai.
At Garden to Table, we provide more than 30,000 tamariki with the opportunity and resources to grow and share their own fresh kai as part of daily life, using fresh bounty straight from the māra kai (garden).
But, what about the children who are missing out?
With your support, more tamariki will learn vital life skills - ensuring a brighter future for them, their whānau, and communities.
The impact of your support
Today, over 300 schools are involved in Garden to Table.
The benefits of Garden to Table radiate far beyond the school gates. As tamariki take their new skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm for seasonal dishes home to their whānau, ripples of positive impact are generated within broader communities. Over time, this builds community wellbeing and food security.
Your donation will empower more children to grow, cook, and share affordable kai in 2024.
Ngā mihi maioha - thank you for helping a child grow.
Forrest Hill’s community connections
Four years ago, the staff at Forrest Hill School came together, united by their vision to inspire tamariki to think about food differently. Today, they run a thriving Garden to Table programme that holds community, diversity and interculturality at its heart, and teaches tamariki about self-confidence, problem-solving, and perseverance.
A budding environmental changemaker
Not many nine-year-olds are engaged with political campaigning for the environment. But, Auckland-based Nico Tauri is on a mission to have every school in New Zealand install compost bins. It all stems back to his time at Kororāreka Russell School in the Bay of Islands, where he participated in Garden to Table, and came to understand the environmental impacts of his food choices.
Nurturing the environment, nurturing self
From the outside, Garden to Table may look like a simple food education programme, where children learn to grow and cook fresh food. But, there’s much more than first meets the eye. In fact, as tamariki learn to grow, harvest, prepare, and share good food through the Garden to Table programme, they also learn how to nurture Papatūānuku (our Earth Mother). This, in turn, benefits their own hauora (health and wellbeing).
“When we sit down to share kai together as a whole school prepared by our students and harvested from our gardens, it feels like staff and students have just deeply exhaled. A big family sharing and enjoying togetherness. The talk is light and excited about the learning"
— School Principal
"Through Garden to Table, kids learn basic skills toward gaining independence. Learning about good foods, how to grow and prepare them. The kids learn about the environment, seasons, cultural aspects of food. Cooking involves maths. Garden to Table helps kids with cooperating with each other"
— Volunteer
"Garden to Table is good because you can learn to cook and plant and bake and how to look after plants. I find Garden to Table good in building your confidence in cooking and being in the garden more often and a good way to start to learn to cook for when you are older"