Ruatōria is isolated. It’s about 130 kilometres away from its nearest town, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne, and has a population of around 900 of whom nearly 80 percent are Māori.
Since 1983 the town has had a Learning Centre. Today the centre is funded by the Eastern Institute of Technology, which supports an ACE programme and a number of mostly free NZQA levels 2 and 3 programmes.
Bridget French-Hall is the EIT ACE co-ordinator. She says that the Learning Centre pulls everybody together. “ACE plays a huge part in what goes on there. Every programme has a big take-up. Many programmes are about sustainability. Everyone grows their own food. Preserving is big. Nothing goes to waste: saving seeds, Māori have always grown plants from seeds. We’ve also had courses on making planter boxes from pallets. There’s always some kind of cooking programme. Recently there was a programme on traditional cooking, food handed down by grandparents, using lots of puha, water cress, native plants and weeds.
“We’ve just had a full month of rongoā Māori wellness courses learning about traditional healing, making balms for colds and flu, and sessions about how to infuse oils with kawakawa and teas from trees. Up to 40 will attend each session, there’s a lot of interest. People up here want to be selfsufficient. It is hard to get to see a doctor. They want to be healthier and stronger and fix themselves. At the end of the wellness sessions they put everything together into a book, so the knowledge can stay in the community.
“Raranga is always well received, and there is a large group making kete and flowers for the urupā. Before winter there was also a group knitting jerseys straight from a raw fleece for themselves and for their family.
“There’s a big creative community in Ruatōria and a group creating music and singing waiata meets every week. The group just gets bigger and bigger. Prior to Matariki we had sessions on how to play the ukulele. It was a big group and such a blast. There was a lot of music after the Matariki celebrations. They are still meeting to learn new and traditional waiata.”
Other ACE courses held this year include line dancing and ukulele for kaumātua, chair yoga, solar funding applications, upskilling for students who received Chromebooks through Kainga Connect, te reo, sewing and gun safety.
Along with all this informal learning the Learning Centre can offer a big range of the EIT’s levels 2 and 3 certificate courses in subjects like agriculture, carpentry, primary industries, computing and horticulture. Where there is a need, and if they can get the numbers, the course is on.
The EIT ACE programme also had an important role to play in the establishment of the thriving local hemp industry.
Panapa Ehau, who is the Director and co-founder of Rua Bioscience, (which began life as the Hikurangi Cannabis Company), says it was local people who saw the opportunity for growing cannabis before it was mainstream.
“There was a new policy framework, which allowed for community-driven courses to be established. That meant the EIT was able to set up the first hemp growing training programme. The practical learning was run on a farm and all the theoretical work was done at the learning centre. The fact that it was community driven accounts for the fact that attendance and the pass rate was 100 percent.”
Rua Bioscience, which is now a world leader in the research and development of plant genetics, specialising in cannabinoid extracts, now employs about 30 people in Ruatōria and Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. Half of them whakapapa to Tairāwhiti.
The hemp course also helped to kick start a small local business. Philippa Bowden was one of the students on that first course and now runs Grassroots Aotearoa producing hemp balms made from the hemp plant root. She says that she learned all she needed to know about the plant – as well as about irrigation systems, “The tutors were great.”
Ngaire Keelan, who is the co-ordinator at the Ruatoria Learning Centre says that a lot of positive things have come out of ACE, which also provides employment for local people who are ACE tutors. “We find people in the community who have skills to share – they facilitate the programme and get an income. As everyone knows them, they want to come and learn in a comfortable space. The big motivation for many people coming along to learn, is sustainability.
“Our 10-week welding course has been very popular. People wanting to do things for themselves and not rely on bringing in people from outside the area, which is expensive. We’ve had a big age group on the course, with people from 18–70.
“Financial literacy has also always filled up. Whānau come along to learn, as well as marae people who want to study how to use Xero.”
“Our taster courses often lead to more permanent courses. In June this year, for example, we ran a part-time horticulture course at our community gardens. Next year we will be running a certificated horticultural course. It will be a Level 3 course. People want to become self-sufficient and provide for themselves and their families by growing kai at home, with a focus on permaculture, so we do a lot of resource gathering to improve sustainability. For example we get seaweed from the beach for our fertilizer and old timber from the dump to make the planters.
“And the kaumātua programmes are very popular. It’s all about wellness, anything that brings them out of their homes, even if it is just once a week. They are so grateful for ACE. After Covid ACE has been the key to getting people back out of their homes and into learning and wanting to do something.”
The ACE funding also provides pastoral care for rangatahi on the one-year MSD programme. The learning centre employs Kyah Dewes to make sure that the young people have food and transport to get to the course. Previously the programme had the rangatahi on work like setting traps and tree planting and testing water quality. Now, because of rangatahi preference, the course is more about outdoor experiences like kayaking and abseiling.
Ngaire says that they are not expecting any major changes as a result of the shift to Te Pūkenga: “We have heard the new CEO speak and he really believes in rural learning centres. I can’t imagine what the town would look like without ACE. We do an evaluation at the end of every course and there are always comments about networking, connectedness and whakawhanaungatanga. And the value of learning new skills and sustainability. It keeps everyone here active and it provides a positive injection offering our people the opportunity to fill our kete with more knowledge.”