The reborn White Lady and the green oasis fighting food poverty

Monday, 9 September 2019

A community food hub and gardens in Papatoetoe is feeding and educating South Auckland locals.

The causes of poverty are complex and solutions often elusive. But across New Zealand's biggest city, people are seeking new ways to break the cycle of dependency and empower others to lead better lives. John Weekes reports.

Behind an old White Lady truck, where downtown drunks used to gather for late-night fast food feeds, Shardae Komene moves among the rows of vegetables.

The food truck, once a familiar sight in Auckland's CBD, has found a new purpose and a new home at Papatoetoe Food Hub, a 20-minute drive south.

'In south Auckland, everybody is a foodie but they don't do it in the right way,' Komene, a mother of two, says. 'It's really serious. We're losing lives through obesity.'

Shardae Komene, from The Roots: Creative Entrepreneurs, is a curator and cafe manager at Papatoetoe Food Hub.

* The ex-cop and the boxer battling poverty and poor health

* The redeemed gangster helping others to escape poverty**

Adults and children in New Zealand's most-deprived areas are far more more likely than those in the wealthiest areas to be obese.

As the hub's cafe manager, Komene's especially happy to see people excited about accessing cheap, nutritious food.

That's taken for granted in more affluent areas, but is crucial in tackling bad health and food poverty ⁠– two elements of Auckland's broader patchwork of poverty.

Like VisionWest in Glen Eden and the East Auckland Breakfast Club, Papatoetoe Food Hub involves a patchwork of partners and supporters.

Apart from Komene and her Roots Creative Entrepreneurs, the hub includes Auckland Council's Southern Initiative, which recognises the interplay of health, housing, employment and educational challenges that can influence or alleviate poverty.

The initiative offers free trades training for Māori and Pacific people and the YouthFull programme of online courses to help people get employment skills.

Komene would like the hub to serve more disenfranchised and disengaged people, including former inmates, so they can become employable.

It's not too late for those adults to get on track and it's even better to ensure the next generation doesn't fall behind.

Some days, schoolkids come in, get shown around and listen to speeches. Komene's husband Waikare, who's also a food hub curator, welcomes high school boys and challenges them to share their goals.

The students from De La Salle College and nearby Southern Cross Campus – both decile 1 schools – talk about working in professions including art therapy and landscape architecture.

'I didn't even know these words when I was you fullas' ages,' Waikare Komene tells them. 'The way I say you figure out yourself is through three things – the head, the heart and the hands.'

He says people need to listen most to the heart: 'Your passion, what you love doing and what motivates you to get up in the morning.

'If we look at our parents, you know, did they love getting up and going to work at six in the morning and doing the shift work? Probably not, but they were doing what needed to be done to hopefully get you guys ahead.'

Now he hopes the next generation of south Aucklanders advance economically. That'll take hard work, and they'll have to stay true to their roots if they want to make a meaningful difference, he says.

He says what drives him is to help his family succeed ⁠— and the odds are stacked against those from south Auckland.

'For us we have to work double time, triple time.'

But there's an upside: 'Once we play catch-up, we start to lead.'

Central to his message is the idea of putting community ahead of self. He says individualism doesn't have to be the motivating ethos for kids who make it into university.

'It's not about self and winning awards. But if you ever go to architecture school, that's what its going to be like. They're all going to be fighting over the top of each other to see who's the best.

'But its not about who's the best, it's about what you can give.'

The ATEED Auckland Prosperity Index in 2018 found Ōtara-Papatoetoe had the highest percentage of Aucklanders employed in declining industries, so there's a need here for upskilling.

That study also found the low skills of local residents limited the chances for people to get well-paid jobs locally, and constrained household incomes.

But Komene says solutions are available. He shows a picture of his old friends, reminding students what an elder once told him: 'You hang around kaka (s…), you're gonna start smelling like kaka'.

It's important to find people with the same aspirations as you, he tells the students.

'These guys challenged me in maths, English and science, they really wanted me to do stuff.'

Some of his friends were children of immigrants who succeeded through hard work, he says.

'It was inspiring to see that. We're from here, this is my country, our whenua. These guys can come here and work hard and get ahead, and that showed me that we can all work hard and get ahead.'