Vector Group Charitable Trust · CC45966
We are the learning community of the kai resilience movement — free courses, workshops, and neighbour-to-neighbour connection so friends, whānau, and local groups can become confident growers, not permanent dependents on emergency food supply.
When supply chains wobble, communities often turn to food hubs, pantries, and donated kai. That compassion matters in a crisis — but hubs alone are not a sustainable long-term food system. They treat hunger after it appears; they do not reliably build the skills, soil, and social fabric that prevent it returning.
Real food resilience looks different: households that know how to grow and store food; neighbours who swap seedlings and recipes; schools and marae with living curricula; growers who share surplus without burning out. It is distributed capability — not a single warehouse everyone queues at when times get hard.
Food Resilience School NZ exists to grow that capability at scale: plain-language learning, practice with others, and pathways from "I buy everything at the supermarket" to "we feed ourselves and our street through the seasons."
For funders & partners
Emergency food has a place in a crisis. Funders we talk to want to know which interventions compound over years — and which reset every grant cycle. Food Resilience School NZ is built for the second column: measurable learning that turns into local growing capacity.
Crisis support — valuable short-term, weak alone as a food strategy
What Food Resilience School NZ and the kai resilience cluster are designed to grow
Kai resilience is the ability of people, families, and communities to keep producing, finding, preparing, and sharing nourishing food — even when prices spike, weather turns, or logistics fail. It connects māra kai, food forests, household skills, and local networks into something that lasts beyond a single grant cycle or emergency response.
This school is one hub in the wider Kai Resilience cluster — directory, tools, and regional listings at kairesilience.food, and education here at foodresilience.school.nz.
Vector Group Charitable Trust (CC45966) is a Te Puke–based charity with a broader mission: envisioning sustainable communities creatively. Kai resilience is a flagship thread — alongside youth development, community connection, and digital infrastructure for the Bay of Plenty and Aotearoa — but the through-line is always lasting community strength, not short-term fixes.
Food Resilience School is VGCT's educational arm: a community of learners, mentors, and independent creators building skills together. We measure progress in enrolled households, completed lessons, workshops attended, and neighbours who graduate from "curious" to "growing" — grant-ready reporting that reflects real behaviour change, not box-ticking.
Seed to Leadership pathways: growing basics, food forests, home storage, community projects, and facilitation. All open — pick any topic, earn Resilience HP as you go.
Browse course librarySubscribe to the official school catalog or independent creator communities. Share harvests, ask questions, and learn alongside others — the social layer that turns lessons into habit.
Browse communitiesCrop swaps, planting days, and food-resilience workshops — mostly Bay of Plenty, open nationwide. Hands-on learning that complements self-paced courses.
Upcoming eventsFree Troppo calculators, RegenOS for site planning, and links across the VGCT kai network — tools that help you act on what you learn on your own whenua.
Grower tools · Network hubHome growers starting their first bed. Parents who want tamariki to know where food comes from. Community groups tired of one-off hub funding. Kiwifruit workers and retirees with land and time. Anyone who believes sustainability means skills in the village, not dependency on the next truck or the next donation drive.
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