Feed me!

“Feed the food baby” they cry, as they wheel the pram around the grounds of Fernworth Primary school in South Invercargill, “Feed the food baby!.”


Pushing the ‘retro’ pram, complete with vinyl hood and solid white tires from classroom to classroom, lunch spot to lunch spot is a much vied-for activity amongst the students at Fernworth. They love it: pushing and crying, alerting the rest of the school that the fruit-scraps collection unit is on its way and ready to do business! And the business is organic recycling, food-scraps collection and delivery, out to the compost heap in the schools ‘Secret Garden’ There’s a romantic element to the schools approach to rubbish and to gardening as you can see and that can be attributed to one teacher at the school who operates, when he’s not teaching, under the title ‘Bioneer’ and is leading the charge to inspire all of the students at the school to embrace the natural way of growing, eating and recycling food.

Bioneer approaches ordinary issues in an extraordinary way and the pram with the food baby is just one of the many ‘off the wall’ projects that he has undertaken since he began at the school as a beginner teacher 2 years ago. The ‘food baby’ though, must be one of his greatest achievements. It works so well. Rather than children reluctantly taking part in what is really rubbish collection, they clamour for the chance to do the rounds and push the pram til it’s full to overflowing with banana and kiwifruit skins and apple cores. I bet their parents wish they’d be as zealous at home but perhaps they are! They certainly don’t show signs of thinking it’s ‘icky’ or beneath their station to wheel a down-scaled rubbish truck around while their peers are at play.

I admire the approach that Bioneer and the children of Fernworth are taking to cleaning up their own mess, using a resource wisely and building spirit at the same time.

I’d like to hear the clarion call, “Feed the food baby” at every school I visit up and down the country.