Sample Responses

Sample of responses to the questions that align with the project sponsors perspective

What does the project title of Enviroschools taking the next step: Sustainable Community through kai mean to you?

·        Taking what we do and developing our resources in our community to a more purposeful sustained way.

·        To make it an authentic need/action in our school

·        Working as one community to care for, share knowledge, skill and time to provide food and excess food for each other

·        The key as I see it is that collectively as a group of schools committed to the Enviroschools’ kaupapa, we are going to take that illusive “next step” and strive individually and corporately to create aspects of authentic sustainability in our schools and communities through the meaningful context of kai.  Schools do a great job of growing things but this next step is more than that and is like stepping up and taking our place in the world and making a difference locally and globally.  If everyone, everywhere focused their learning on how it can make a positive difference for others, then our world would be a much better and brighter place. 

·        Buy in from the community to ask – what if we can half our food bill? What if we can eat healthy food that we have grown ourselves?

·        Moving beyond what we know works within our schools for developing sustainable practices such as organic gardens to empowering others in and as part of our communities so that healthy nourishing food is accessible

·        How we bridge gaps and work with our community to see which parts of the food cycle we can influence or develop to be less energy demanding, more efficient in the use of resources, produced and accessed locally

·        Sharing what we have learnt in our school settings with and through our communities so that people in our communities are not hungry

What might be the benefits of this project long and short term?

Long term

·        Connections between community members and learning and sharing of knowledge

·        Life is not a throw away/consumable lifestyle

·        Enduring understanding – action and consequence we are all connected and need to be sustainable

·        Being well planned for next year

·        Learning to grow food bring new people in, empowering adults to have confidence to help the school

·        Inclusive community for all cultures

·        Sharing knowledge from all cultures

·        Short term – comfortably belonging to a community

·        Food for those who need it

·        Skill sharing

·        Conversation

·        Ako

·        become part of a school culture in all its dimensions

·        This project creates the conditions for looking beyond our individual schools and creating a learning community focusing on sustainability and changing practices at a school and at a community level. 

·        Contributing to action learning that will inform best practice through the Enviroschools foundation,

·        Creating sustainable change in schools and communities.

·        Developing students’ knowledge and understanding of creating, building and strengthening sustainable communities through kai.

·        Students driving school wide initiatives and developing leadership, practical and life long learning skills.

·        Parents, families and whanau developing knowledge and understanding of sustainability and taking active steps to make a difference too.

·        Re-connecting of communities to enable equitable and empowered learners and teachers

·        Good food available to all parts of our community

·        More people living, learning and earning in the community that they are in

·        Perhaps a shift in economics or the way that we think of ‘jobs’ that are valued, so that growing food or making food accessible to all is a role that is enabled by the community

Short term benefits include:

·        the development of a supportive cluster with a common professional learning focus,

·        positive networking across schools and areas,

·        the development of authentic learning contexts for students,

·        focused topic for inquiry,

·        strong level of support from facilitators,

·        more produce = healthier students

·        Re-defining who is a teacher and who is a learner

·        Ideas about how to make the lines between community and school less visible

·        Students living and learning in their community