Kelly Francis, Auckland

FOUNDER OF WHENUA WARRIOR, A CHARITY WHICH HAS ESTABLISHED MORE THAN 1200 VEGETABLE GARDENS IN BACKYARDS FROM KAITĀIA TO CHRISTCHURCH WITH THE AIM OF EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO GROW THEIR OWN FOOD.

About five years ago Kelly Francis (Ngāpuhi) had an epiphany. Up until then she had been working in the world of corporate tourism “and I’d made a lot of money for a lot of people, including myself.” But while that life seemed, at first, to offer a lot she was increasingly noticing what was missing, in particular feeling connected to her culture and to the natural world.

So when she suddenly faced redundancy, she thought, for the first time in her work life, about what she actually wanted to do. She spent some time working in landscaping, “being out of an office, working outside, that felt closer but I wasn’t there yet.” And then she took part in a Kai Oranga course at Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae in Māngere which taught organic food production along traditional Māori lines. And all of a sudden, Kelly says, she felt connected to something important. “And once that connection was created for me I thought, well I want to start creating spaces where people can do the same thing for themselves.”

And so Whenua Warrior was formed, with the aim of setting up planterboxes at people’s homes, complete with soil and seedlings, so families could grow their own fresh healthy food. The charitable trust has now established hundreds of vegetable gardens in backyards, papakāinga, schools, kohanga, marae and other community spaces.

But Whenua Warrior is “more like a movement than a business,” Kelly says, so it’s not just about what the trust achieves by itself. “In the Manawatū, there’s a community group and they are now getting together every Sunday and setting up a garden at a home. People in Wellington are doing this now, and in Taranaki.”

And that’s important, Kelly says. Every garden Whenua Warrior builds is a little bit different, because it’s not about coming in and knowing what’s best – it’s about what a family or community want and need.

“I can’t be Kelly the Aucklander going into the Manawatū and offering a solution. It would be ridiculous for me to take a small garden box to a marae in Te Aroha which has 500 people to feed. Real change has to be community led. A fancy name for it is co-designed but what that means is of course the community knows best about what food they should grow and how much and who should receive it.”

Kelly and the team are right in the middle of building another 600 gardens in backyards across South Auckland. But the mahi is nowhere near done yet, she says.

“I’d like for every New Zealander to have access to an edible garden in which to grow food,” she says. “And I feel like that’s completely possible if we work together.”

“My main priority is still connecting people to land and land to people. The growing food actually comes second.”