The Oke Origin Story

For Oke, that moment came in 2014, two years before the charity even existed.

At the time, Paul Dickson, was managing the Head2Head Walk, a fundraiser he’d started with his wife back in 2011. It was simple in concept. Get people together, cover 125km around the Manukau Harbour, raise some money, back something that mattered. For the 2014 event, it was decided to support the implementation of the Garden to Table programme at Papatoetoe West School. It felt like a good fit. Help kids understand where food comes from, give them something hands-on, something real. The plan was straightforward. Raise a few thousand dollars, fund the programme, move on.

But when we got closer to it, something didn’t add up.

The programme was ready. The school was on board. The intention was there. But the space wasn’t. There was no garden. No outdoor classroom. No place for this programme to actually live and breathe. It was one of those moments where you stop and realise that the thing everyone assumes is already in place, just wasn’t.

And that’s where the story shifts.

Because at that point, you’ve got a choice. You can shrug your shoulders, do what you set out to do, and let someone else figure out the rest. Or you can lean in, even if it means making things harder for yourself.

The Dicksons leaned in.

The original goal of raising $3,000 quickly became $10,000. The focus shifted from funding a programme to building the space it needed to survive. And instead of waiting for someone else to come in and do the work, we brought people together and did it ourselves. One working bee. One day. A group of people with tools, time, and a shared belief that this needed to happen.

By the end of that day, something had changed. Not just physically, although the transformation of the space was obvious. There was now a garden. A place for kids to learn, to grow food, to connect with something beyond the classroom walls. But something else had shifted too. A line had been crossed between what schools were expected to have and what they actually had.

That should have been the end of it. A good project. A job well done.

It wasn’t. Because when you solve a real problem, people notice. Word started to spread. Not through marketing campaigns or press releases, but through conversations. Principals talking to other principals. Teachers sharing what they’d seen. Communities asking questions. And the same question kept coming up, again and again.

“Can you help us do that here?”

That was the moment everything changed.

It became clear, very quickly, that this wasn’t a one-off gap. This was everywhere. Schools wanted to deliver programmes like Garden to Table. They wanted to give kids hands-on learning experiences. They wanted spaces where learning felt different. But they didn’t have the infrastructure to make it happen. No gardens. No outdoor classrooms. No support to build them.

And no one was stepping in to fix it. That realisation was both simple and uncomfortable. Because once you see a gap like that, you can’t pretend it’s not there. You can’t walk away from it without knowing you’ve left something unfinished.

That’s where Oke began.

Not as a grand idea. Not as a fully formed charity with a roadmap and a strategy. But as a response. A decision to keep going. To take what had worked in one school and apply it to another. And then another.

The name came later, but it mattered.

Growing up, Paul was always told to remember where he started. To stay grounded. To not lose sight of the beginning. So when it came time to name this thing, he went back to Papatoetoe West School. Right at the front of the school stands a huge oak tree. Solid. Unmoving. The kind of thing that becomes part of the landscape without you even realising it.

And the Māori word for oak is “oke”. That connection felt right. But there was more to it than that. The word oke had another meaning:

(verb) to be eager, struggle, writhe, strive, fight for, battle for, keep going.

That hit home, because if Paul was going to succeed in making these spaces happen, this is what was going to be needed. Not in a loud or dramatic way, but in a steady, determined way. The kind of resilience that doesn’t always get noticed, but makes all the difference over time.

That’s what this work felt like. And still feels like. And then there’s the line that sits underneath it all. Growing Mighty Kids. From little acorns, mighty oaks grow. It’s simple, but it holds the whole story. Because none of this starts big. It starts small. A seed. An idea. A single day where people decide to show up and do something that matters.

What started as one working bee didn’t stay that way. It couldn’t. Because once you’ve seen what’s possible, you start to realise how much has been missing. One school turned into two. Two turned into ten. And somewhere along the way, it stopped being about a single project and became something much bigger.

Communities began to form around these builds. Parents, teachers, kids, volunteers. People who didn’t need to be there, but chose to be. Spaces were created that weren’t just functional, but meaningful. Places where kids could engage in a different way. Where learning wasn’t confined to four walls. Where the kid who struggles to sit still suddenly finds their rhythm.

And that’s the part that matters most, because this was never really about gardens. It was about creating environments where kids could feel connected. Where they could build confidence. Where they could experience learning in a way that works for them.

Looking back now, it’s tempting to tell this story like it was all intentional. Like there was always a bigger picture in mind. There wasn’t. It started with a problem that didn’t make sense. A decision to do something about it. And a group of people willing to step in and make it happen.

That’s it, no origin story needs more than that. And it all traces back to that moment in 2014, when we realised something so obvious it had been overlooked. You can’t run a garden programme, without a garden.

Funny how something that simple ends up changing everything.