Media Release 20 October 2010

Manukau City Council Wins National Award

Manukau Parks’ work on the The Manukau Teaching Garden Project won it the New Zealand Recreation Association’s (NZRA) 2010 Outstanding Project Award at last night’s NZRA annual awards ceremony.

The project is a community collaboration among a wide range of people and organisations including Manukau Parks, City Parks Services, mentors, caretakers and volunteers. It uses gardening as an opportunity to address physical activity and nutrition goals through providing families with secure access to affordable food; and at the same time it supports the Counties Manukau District Health Board’s Let’s Beat Diabetes – Gardening4Health Initiative.

NZRA Chief Executive Steve Gibling said the judges especially liked the leisure education approach of the project and the innovation used, including looking at redundant sportsfields for future gardens.

“Give a man a plant and he’ll feed himself, teach a man to garden and he’ll feed the community. This project is a great example of people helping people,” Gibling said. He added that the judging panel was very impressed as well with the unprecedented scale of this new form of recreation with 2ha of garden area proposed, 400 plots available and 800 students annually.

The NZRA Outstanding Awards were presented during NZRA’s annual conference awards dinner, which was held at Wellington’s Te Papa National Museum. Recreation professionals from all around the country attended the conference, entitled “Connect…the dots”, which focussed on connecting policy and practice, politics and programmes, as well as different sectors within the community.

“Recreation is essential to our physical and mental health,” says Gibling. “We are lucky in New Zealand that we have access to fantastic outdoor parks and reserves, we have modern recreation facilities and a dedicated group of professionals who strive to deliver appealing, safe, appropriate and enjoyable recreational services.

“The awards are about thanking those people, and recognising those among them who raise the bar, develop innovative solutions and inspire New Zealanders to get active and healthy,” he says.

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