Healthy Eating - Healthy Action (HEHA) promotes an environment and society where individuals, families and whanau, and communities are supported to eat well, live physically active lives, and attain and maintain a healthy body weight.
HEHA has helped 84% of all early childhood centres (ECE) and schools on the Coast implement a variety of projects that encourage healthier eating and healthier actions in the last two years.
Projects funded by HEHA include tunnel house gardens, raised gardens, kitchen and cooking equipment, teaching and learning resources, composting systems and worm farms for schools and ECEs.
The HEHA Nutrition Fund has given The Children's House in Hokitika the opportunity to establish raised gardens beds and a tunnel house garden. Children often pick produce from the garden to snack on at their leisure. To enable children to participate in all stages of the process from the garden to the plate, the ECE has recently been granted funding to purchase a slow cooker, a food processor and a chest freezer.
Paroa Playcentre have used HEHA funding to establish a raised garden and purchase basic cooking equipment to cook the food that has been grown in the garden. The centre's dramatic play area has also received funding to purchase a children's kitchen set.
Runanga School has used funding from the HEHA Nutrition Fund to establish edible gardens, the "Little Rascals" café, and a composting system so they can minimize their waste.
"The freestanding gardens that have been built through the Nutrition Fund are the first development of a planned environmentally friendly garden area. We have now received funding for a composter that creates compost in 14 days", comments Joy Baker, Principal of Runanga School. "The HEHA funded projects have allowed us to think beyond the square and develop some different initiatives that normally would not have even been considered."
For more information please contact
Bryan Jamieson
Community Liaison Officer
West Coast DHB
PO Box 387
Greymouth 7840
Phone (DDI): (03) 769-7665
Mobile: 027 245-9595
Email: