Environmental trust changes lives

An environmentally-minded North Waikato couple has set up the Te Whangai Trust, which is running a sustainable nursery that is not only helping farmers, but turning unemployed people’s lives around.

Created by Miranda dairy farmers Adrienne and Gary Dalton, the trust employs people struggling to find work and trains them in plant propagation and nursery skills.

It sells native plants to farmers and community groups at wholesale rates to make environmental restoration projects more affordable, and offers technical advice and skilled labour for planting projects.

“We’re passionate about farming, about people and about our environment, so the trust is a way of melding these together,” Mrs Dalton said.

“It’s designed to help farmers get on with the core business of farming, while giving people a job and a future.

As well as receiving horticultural training, Te Whangai employees are given advocacy support and assisted with health care. They are also taught life skills such as budgeting, cooking and nutrition, to help them build self esteem and ready them for the workforce.

“Te Whangai is Maori for nurture or adopt and that’s what we’re all about; we nurture people to nurture the environment,” Mrs Dalton said.

The trust is already a success story. Since its launch November, half of its first 12 trainees have found full time employment.

“The key is gaining each other’s respect, working together and supporting each other,” Mrs Dalton said.

“These guys, when they have self esteem, they can do anything and their loyalty and ability is enormous.”

The Daltons first began working with unemployed people through Winz about six years ago.

They have long been committed to protecting and restoring ecological areas on their farm, which borders the internationally significant Miranda seabird coast, a protected breeding area for native, endemic and migratory birds.

They employed a Taskforce Green crew to help them restore some native bush on their farm and worked side by side with the employees, weeding, planting trees and fencing off bush.

“We got to know them as people and got to know what their issues and circumstances were,” Mrs Dalton said.

“They had a lot of ability but they had no one to advocate for them. Because of their situation they were in a rut and they couldn’t get out to get a job.

“One of the boys was 18 and he’d just come out of prison and gone straight back into the same environment, with the same mates and the same problems. He was really ill and I think a lot of that was nerves about how society was going to receive him. We took him to a doctor and taught him how to cook and how to achieve goals and he turned his life around. Now he’s working full time on a farm near Hamilton.”

Over a period of five years the couple worked with 20 people from Taskforce Green, supporting them, advocating for them with agencies and readying them for the workforce. Eighteen of the 20 now have full time jobs.

However a government move to shorten Taskforce Green contracts to six months, instead of 12, prompted them to stop taking on new workers.

“Six months wasn’t enough,” Mrs Dalton said.

“It takes six months to sort out their issues and get them into a mindset where they want to work. We need the next six months to find out what they enjoy doing so we can help them find a job they enjoy.”

When Winz Thames approached them asking to continue the relationship, they saw an opportunity to set up Te Whangai.

Needing someone with nursery skills to get the initiative off the ground, they found an ally in noted horticulturalist and broadcaster Bill Ward, now operations manager.

The couple funded the nursery and built it from scratch in one of their paddocks.

The trust was launched in November in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development, which is providing funding for wages.

YTT Nursery in Bombay sourced seed to help get the nursery off the ground and community volunteers offered free services to Te Whangai employees, including health care.

“This project has brought out the best in everyone, it’s just utterly amazing,” Mrs Dalton said.

“We now have more than 100,000 plants in the nursery, not counting seedlings in the potting sheds, and that’s in six months, with supposedly unqualified staff.”

Five others have joined Mr Ward and the Daltons on the trust advisory team – international environmental and life skills consultant Annie Perkins, Auckland Botanic Gardens conservator, author and broadcaster Jack Hobbs, accountant Peter Rogers, ex-Hamilton mayor Margaret Evans and Agfirst Agricultural Advisors partner Nico Mouton.

“We’re just really humbled and grateful for the support we’ve got from so many people like the Ministry of Social Development, Environment Waikato, YTT Nursery and people who have come on board with their expertise on the trust,” Mrs Dalton said.

Now the trust is seeking help from the business sector to help it shift into second gear.

“We need a bit of money for some new facilities like toilets and to upgrade farm sheds we’re currently using. Perhaps we can find synergies with an industry and provide them with the trees they need. We don’t want charity, we strongly believe in hand-ups not hand-outs.”

Te Whangai can supply native plants for regeneration projects in many parts of the Waikato region.

Projects include community and school-based projects, ecological catchment initiatives, environmental compliance projects, reforestation initiatives and plantings to offset carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol.

Environment Waikato chairman Peter Buckley, who has visited the trust, said it was doing a great job of “getting plants out there at a reasonable price for farmers and supporting environmental initiatives, while helping people who have been unemployed for long periods of time to get back into the workforce”.

If you would like to buy native trees or support the trust, please call Adrienne Dalton on (09) 232 7725.