Funds raised will support our people - what we call ‘celery ops.’ Celery may not be the fanciest vegetable, but it’s the foundation of a lot of tasty meals. Help us keep the good folk doing the good mahi. Click here to support.
Video credit: Film & Edit by www.paasca.com. Music by Music Video Education & Avalon Intermediate School
The Common Unity Project Aotearoa is a charity that initiates, umbrellas, partners and supports locally owned enterprises. We celebrate the abundance of gifts in our community and work hard to address challenges that affect us all.
Our journey began in 2012, with a pilot project based at Epuni Primary School – a little school with a big heart. On a disused soccer field, we grew enough food to feed the children of Epuni School three times a week.
We have now moved across the road into a massive building we call The ReMakery. This is home to all our projects and partners in the community who are creating their own magic.
The ReMakery is a place to rebuild, restructure and redefine old, out-of-date things. It is a place to create a new way, starting with the best of what we already know, and the best of what we already have. It is a place for sharing knowledge, time and skills, and for learning, learning, learning...
Together, we grow our own solutions.
The Beeple Honey Collective is a sweet bit of local goodness that supports New Zealand's struggling bees so they can, in turn, feed our community's hungriest tums.
Beeple puts hives into backyards and community apiaries around the Wellington region, and trains and employs local dads, our Bee Daddies, to service and care for them.
Our hive hosts receive some honey at the end of the season and the rest we donate to local charities and low-decile schools, or sell, returning the profits to urban food projects and to further develop the Beeple Honey Collective.
We put 40 hives out into community during our first season, pollinating sweet goodness from Upper Hutt to Island Bay and everywhere in between.
Find out more about the Beeple Honey Collective and how to host a hive
The Common Grocer is Wellington's first low-cost, member-owned, plastic-free grocery co-operative. Based at The ReMakery, we purchase wholesale and our members run the store themselves – this keeps our prices extremely low.
Members pay a small annual fee and give a few hours of their time in exchange for accessing food and household items at extremely low prices.
Alongside reducing costs we also reduce waste. The Common Grocer doesn't provide single-use plastic shopping bags or containers, instead we encourage our members to reuse and repurpose what they already have.
The Common Grocer also runs workshops, where members of the community share their diverse knowledge, teaching others how to cook delicious meals from scratch, make natural cleaning products, and much much more!
Project Sunshine Aotearoa creates beautiful plantings of sunflowers throughout New Zealand and provides food for our bees and other pollinators.
Every year Epuni Primary School’s little farmers grow hundreds of sunflowers in the school garden. They then dry the sunflower heads, collect thousands of seeds, make beautiful seed packets, and post the seeds far and wide throughout the country to anyone who would like to grow them!
Together, we spread sunshine in our communities.
The Sew Good Cooperative re-loves and repurposes old fabrics and textiles into brand new useful and beautiful things.
Creating new employment and upskilling opportunities for our community, the Sew Good Cooperative gets together weekly at The ReMakery. All are welcome.
Visit our online shop to see our range of repurposed corporate uniform products, including reusable lunch bags and our famous Shirty Shoppers!
We welcome donations of quality fabrics, machines and equipment. Home sewers and corporate groups are very welcome to come and sew with us, to learn or teach new skills.
ReCycled Rides is a community bike library offering rescued, fixed-up bikes to Epuni and the wider Hutt Valley community.
ReCycled Rides takes bikes destined for landfill and refurbishes them for loan to the community. Borrowers are encouraged to `pay` with time instead of money for their bike hire via our Unity Timebank. We recognise everyone has something to offer in return for the loan of a bike.
We’ve built a bike track at Epuni School for our community to use, and in school holidays we explore our neighbourhood on family bike rides.
Please join us! Together, we ride.
Find out more about ReCycled Rides
Check out the ReCycled Rides Facebook page for updates and the latest news
Fuelled by our internationally represented Unity Kitchen team, our community kitchen provides beautiful, globally inspired food made from locally grown produce, and caters for functions of all sizes.
The Unity Kitchen team also run wonderful foodie workshops, sharing their creative talents for others to learn.
If you’re organising a catering event – whether it’s a conference lunch, a wedding feast, or a team-building event that needs the best cakes you've ever eaten – or if you’re keen to learn from these exceptional cooks, Unity Kitchen wants to talk to you!
Email julia@cupa.org.nz for details.
Urban Kai Farms are transforming lawns at homes, schools and institutions into intensely productive urban farms across the Hutt Valley. We are creating a local ecosystem that grows employment and increases access to local, organically grown, nutrient-dense fruit and vegetables.
The Hutt Valley is blessed with some of the most fertile soils in Aotearoa New Zealand, and used to be covered in market gardens that fed the entire Wellington region. Today, some of our hungriest children call it home.
The soil under our feet is teeming with life and possibility and Urban Kai Farms are working to reconnect us with the abundance our soil can provide.
As we grow food, we grow resilience in our community. We provide education programmes to build skills and increase knowledge of food waste and the environmental consequences of mainstream food production. Together, we experience better physical and emotional health by connecting with nature through farming.
Come farm with us.
Find out more about Urban Kai Farms
Check out the latest news and updates on our Urban Kai Farms Facebook page
