Putting kai on table for everyone

One of my favourite places to be is Hiruharama - along the Whanganui River - in the settlement founded by Sister Suzanne Aubert in 1892.

The Sisters have a particular commitment to the whanau of Ngati Hau at Jerusalem, and Ngati Ruaka people of Ranana. Their focus is on as much as feeding the body as it is about feeding the soul. They are very much part of the local life, sharing what they grow with others, never letting anyone go hungry, or without a bed.

It is a philosophy that my mother also instilled in me. Mum always believed we must care for the living.

As a child, we used to gather kai and always share it with our families.

My nan took it on herself to grow enough vegetables to be able to give the best to our manuhiri, the next grade to all of our families around the marae, and the rest to feed our family. It was a commitment she could make to the collective larder - to nourish all our whanau, to put kai on the table.

All of us rangatahi used to help out, but it was my mum who took such fierce pride in tending the marae gardens, preparing the whenua to nurture the most succulent kai I have ever eaten.

What I realised then was that, for mum, it was about much more than simply the fact that our vegetable gardens were always bursting at the seams, or our flowerbeds overflowing with blooms of all variety. Maintaining the marae gardens was essentially about the practice of manaakitanga. It was her recipe for healthy living - sustaining the collective wellbeing, planting enough so that we could all thrive. It has been a lifetime example to me of whanau ora. We never wanted for anything. But we are not all gardeners. Some of us live in flats and concrete blocks without space for a garden; some of us simply are not endowed with the legendary green thumb. But we can still tend the soil of our future wellbeing, by the way in which we make our contribution felt.

Our uncle, for instance, used to collect all the whanau up in the days when you could travel on the back of a truck and take us, with two buckets each, to Waiterere Beach to collect pipis to be shared among the extended whanau.

Somehow, we do not see money as simply a resource to be shared for living equally as whanau. Our marae has taken on a commitment for each of our families to make automatic payments, to ensure the wellbeing of the marae is maintained. But we might also look at ways in which those of us who have the means are able to be generous in a material sense - helping to provide and care for others. There are innumerable ways in which we can help sponsor the difference for our families - to take care of all the fees and textbook costs for children at school; to gift our payrise to members of our families who might need it more; to buy a bit extra in the groceries and lend a helping hand when we know times are hard.

How are we acting on the resolutions we made at New Year to ensure all our families are healthy, strong and supported? I'd love to see a time when foodbanks and hardship grants are only needed in exceptional circumstances, because for the great majority of the time, we care for our own, the way our tupuna always wanted us to.