KEY POINTS:
Parents and neighbours of teenage "gangsters" in the Auckland suburb of Owairaka have turned to gardening in a bid to lure their youngsters away from drink and crime.
Indian, Maori, Pakeha, Somali, Samoan and Tongan groups have come together to plant vegetables in a community garden on the site of the old Owairaka Social Welfare boys' home, which has been bought by the Eden-Albert Community Board and is being transformed into a park.
It's part of a plan which also includes a basketball tournament and work with parents and Pacific Island churches to help unemployed youths to get back into education.
Parenting education is also planned for migrant parents who can't cope with teenage children who adopt "Kiwi" attitudes.
"Clearly they can't control the teenage kids. They need parenting education," said Fadumo Ahmed, a local mother who chairs the New Zealand Somali Women's Organisation.
"Most of the mothers feel upset that teenagers have already left school and we are putting our effort into how they manage themselves. If they are willing to go back to their education [it will be better], that is what we are thinking."
The groups spoke to the Herald yesterday after National Party leader John Key described one of the local streets, McGehan Close, as a "dead-end" street where residents were "terrorised by youth gangs".
A Tongan community leader, Will 'Ilolahia, said they had been planning the garden and other projects since a Tongan youth was stabbed to death in McGehan Close in 2002.
The gardens finally took shape four months ago.
"It took the council four years to finally give us the plot. Now that we have the plot, we are trying to work on getting all the groups together."
He got Government money in 2002 to organise a basketball tournament but that was one-off and he has had to go to the Procare general practitioners' group and Sport Auckland to finance a repeat this summer.
"That's what we have to do to change that mindset, to counter all this stuff from TV with hip-hop, rap and gangsta stuff and give them this kind of work that we are doing here."
