Growing Food, Relationships and Hope

By Carla Gee - Eco Matters - August 2025

Eight years ago, West Auckland community organisations came together with a bold brief: imagine what we could build to help our communities thrive.

Among the many ideas shared, kai resilience stood out. It was from this shared vision that the Kai West Collective began to take shape.

“We’ve always believed in the power of food to connect people to place, to each other, and to the whenua,” says Carla Gee, CEO of EcoMatters Environment Trust. “Kai West gave us a way to bring that belief into a collective space.”

In the early days, Kai West was held by passionate volunteers with no funding, just commitment. Those involved contributed time and effort to pilot initiatives such as Te Puna Market and produce insights such as the Urban Farming Feasibility Study. The idea was to explore ways to use local green spaces to grow food, build resilience and reconnect communities.

EcoMatters plays a role in the food space through soil health and growing, while other partners bring expertise in areas like food relief. Being part of Kai West helps each organisation to understand the bigger picture of the food system.

“We’ve definitely deepened our understanding,” says Carla. “We’ve also built beautiful relationships with other organisations, large and small. That diversity of representation is one of Kai West’s strengths.”

The turning point for Kai West was receiving funding from Weave, a group of eight family foundations working together to support community-led projects that drive positive change.

“It felt incredible,” says Carla. “We weren’t sure we’d be selected but when we were, it was a huge relief and a real validation of all the work we’d done so far.”

The funding allowed the collective to step up its efforts. It supported a dedicated coordinator role, filled by someone with deep local knowledge and connections, so that Kai West could both move faster and be more strategic.

Milestones from the first year of Weave funding include finalising the Kai West charter, activating its theory of change, and forming subcommittees under the steering group.

“It’s helped us to level up, after years of reliance on volunteer support,” says Carla. “We’re more focused, more accountable and more professional now.”

The funding support also saw some reorganisation of Kai West’s relationships with those organisations involved, with the transfer of responsibility for the coordinator’s role moving from Healthy Families Waitākere to EcoMatters.

“We now feel even more intimately involved in the work of the network and we’re proud to be helping shape its future, alongside all the other dedicated organisations and individuals involved,” says Carla.

Kai West has several networks of action, which see representatives from organisations working together to deliver tangible outcomes for communities.

“This model builds resilience, not just in the kai space, but in relationships,” says Carla.

“We’re forming the networks that will help us stand up and work together when the next climate-driven event comes. Neighbours knowing neighbours, local spaces for growing food, that’s the vision for our area.”

Another example of collective impact is the opportunities for Kai West to share its knowledge and experience with other organisations and collectives across the motu.

“If we can demonstrate with certainty that something works and it could be picked up and used elsewhere, that to me would also demonstrate impact,” says Carla. “And we’re getting closer to that every day.”