OKE Working Bees

Papatoetoe West Primary - Saturday 14th February '15

14th february 2015

Papatoetoe East Primary was the first school in which OKE (Head2Head Charity at the time) built a garden at a local primary school. It was at this school where our Chief Go Getter (Founder), Paul Dickson, realised that schools needed assistance with building fruit and vegetable gardens. The initial idea was to build a few garden beds, but then we realised there was a lot more needed to make a garden sustainable; tools for kids and teachers, wheelbarrows, toolshed and a greenhouse. The school bought the garden bed kit sets and our charity donated everything else. Pulling together the working bee, a team of volunteers went about building an awesome new garden. Two years on and the garden is thriving!

Papatoetoe East Primary - Saturday 4th June '16

11th june 2016

Following on from the success of the garden at Papatoetoe West (and the rebrand of the charity to OKE), our charity was recommended to Papatoetoe East Primary, who were looking to get their kids gardening. OKE took a lot of lessons from the first garden at Papatoetoe East and went about recruiting a whole heap of skilled volunteers (a lot of which were sourced by the school). We built all the raised beds from scratch, as well as built worm baths from recycled baths, built a toolshed (with shelves) and even managed to build some potting tables. We called upon the expertise of Winter Gardenz to supply the greenhouse. The kids are loving their new garden!

Bairds Mainfreight Primary - Wednesday 1st March '17

1st march 2017

At the beginning of 2017, the OKE Squad got together and we set an ambitious goal of building four new school gardens in 2017, last year we only built the garden at Papatoetoe East (which was awesome btw). We had already been in conversation with the awesome team at Bairds Mainfreight Primary, Otara, about helping to resurrect their school garden. They would be school #1 in 2017 and what an awesome way to kick off the year. The amazing teachers at the school cleared out the old garden and on March 1st, a crackin' bunch of parents, teachers and the OKE Squad rocked up and built a new garden. The kids loved seeing the new garden be built.

Weymouth Primary - Tuesday 4th April '17

4th april 2017

We continued our amazing start to 2017 with a working bee at Weymouth Primary School. We first met up with Saane (Principal) and Melissa (Enviro Lead) at Weymouth School late last year. There was an amazing space begging to be turned into a garden and be part of the brilliant sustainable education practices beginning to take place at the school. We were joined on the day by local environmental teams, parents, teachers, the amazing staff from Crombie Lockwood, NZ Greens Candidate Hayley Holt and of course the awesome Vodafone Warriors Squad. As well as supplying a new greenhouse, all the tools needed and a compost bin, the team built six new large garden beds. Due to the efficiency of the team, we even managed to plant a new orchard, clear out the school bush and plant an abandoned boat...mind blowing effort.

Manurewa Central School - Saturday 21st October '17

21st october 2017

Following the amazing success of the Weymouth Primary School Working Bee, OKE were approached by Manurewa Local Board to discuss building a school garden in Manurewa. Working with Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust, OKE went about identifying Manurewa Central School as the next school to receive an OKE: Growing A Future garden. The Working Bee date was set for Saturday 21st October. The school recruited an awesome army of volunteers, as did OKE, bringing along friends, family and volunteers from Wotton+Kearney (who also very kindly donated $500 to OKE on the day). This was another incredible conversion of an old space, updated with nine new raised beds (built from scratch), a polytunnel, a tool shed and a new compost bin solution. We were very fortunate to have Bunnings donate new wheelbarrows and a tool shed. There was also the surprise addition of a friendship bench, which will allow kids to sit and enjoy there awesome outdoor space.

Reremoana Primary School - Tuesday 20th March '18

20th march 2018

In 2017 we built a new school garden at Weymouth Primary School, which has been a great success. News of this success spread to the local community of Wattle Downs and teachers at Reremoana Primary approached OKE to build a garden at their school. The great opportunity with this build was that it would be used to connect Reremoana with the neighbouring early education centre and also another local primary school, Clayton Primary...bringing this community closer together. OKE were very fortunate to have received a Mercury Energy Community Grant, which covered the entire cost of this build, thank you. Mercury also sent a team of volunteers to help build the garden. Again we had Bunnings on board with donating the tool shed, wheel barrows and bolts for the raised beds, thank you. It was an amazing effort once again and another amazing garden was built in just one day.

Papatoetoe South School - Tuesday 9th May '18

9th may 2018

As you may know, the original goal for the OKE Charity was to setup every primary school in Papatoetoe, Auckland, with a school garden. So it was a real pleasure to have another Papatoetoe school jump on board and help OKE head towards this goal. This time it was Papatoetoe South School. It was another amazing turn out of volunteers and once again supported by both Bunnings and Fonterra. The school had an unused space near their swimming pool which was ideal for transforming into an amazing outdoor classroom. As well as raised beds, a compost bin and a tool shed, there was an awesome poly tunnel built to help grow seedlings and summer veggies through winter. A huge thank you to everyone who helped.

Waimahia Intermediate School - Tuesday19th March ‘19

19th march 2019

Back in April 2017, OKE helped build an outdoor classroom/school garden at Weymouth Primary School. Following on from that build we were in constant communication with Waimahia Intermediate, who are the neighbouring intermediate school. It was great to build a place to grow at Waimahia, as it meant the kids coming through from Weymouth Primary would be able to continue their fun and learning in these outdoor spaces. We were joined on the day by students from Weymouth Primary, Waimahia Intermediate and James Cook High School. The school had wanted to build an OC for a long time, so it was awesome to be able to get the school growing, helping to build raised beds, cleaning up the existing greenhouse, planting of trees and the usual list of tools to make this a sustainable garden.

Everglade Primary School - Tuesday 9th April ‘19

9th april 2019

It was with great excitement that we were able to work with Everglade Primary School. The build marked the start of our working relationship with Manurewa High School Trades Academy, who built and installed the raised beds. We also had volunteers from Z Energy, as well parents and teachers from the school. It was a great sunny location to build the OC, which was vacant and unused. By the end of the day we had built ten new raised beds, cleaned and painted 30 metres of fence, assembled brand new tunnel house and toolshed. We donated a dozen fruit trees which were planted at a later day (the ground was hard clay and needed hole boring machines to bought in). It was another transformational day.

Puhinui School - Thursday 5th September ‘19

5th September 2019

And we did it, we hit school #10! On Thursday 5th September 2019, we achieved the awesome milestone of working with ten schools by building a new OC at Puhinui School in Papatoetoe. This build was funded by Auckland Airport and we were fortunate to have a great team of volunteers from Kiwi Property to help transform this space. Once again Manurewa High School Trades academy was on board. New raised beds were built, as well as a new tunnel house and tool shed, as a home for all the shiny new tools. We also planted over sixty native trees along the back of the playing field to mark our 10th school milestone.