LIMERICK fruit and vegetable growing enthusiasts are being urged to get growing their own food in 2017.
Wellness Coach Alison Canavan has teamed up with GIY and Energia for the ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’ initiative which offers community and voluntary organisations the opportunity to apply to the €70,000 pool of funding which will enable groups to start or further develop a community food-growing project in their area.
Grants from the ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing Fund’ will be split across three categories, ‘Sow’, ‘Grow’ and ‘Harvest’ with awards ranging from €500 to €2,000.
Together GIY and Energia will support at least 85 community food growing groups from all across the country and applications are being accepted until January 20 next.
Alison feels that as a nation “we have lost our connection to food and I feel with the digital age we are really losing connections in general with each other and with ourselves.
“Our connection with food is so important; we should all be considering how we eat and what we eat all for our overall health and wellness.
“We eat at computers, we eat in the car and really there is not much thought put into where the food that we are swallowing comes from or how it was prepared.
Urging that we should all know where our food comes from, Alison says that “it is so important that children understand that food doesn’t come form a supermarket shelf but that food grows in the ground and that they can in fact grow it for themselves.
She feels that the growing project can help achieve those goals and that space need not be a hinderance.
In addition to the funding awarded to groups in Spring 2017, GIY will also provide additional supports and opportunities for knowledge exchange between the projects, helping the best ideas to be shared through ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’.
The funding pool is now open to any community group, school, NGO or Not for Profit, community garden or allotment group, GIY group, hospital, crèche, direct provision centre, men’s shed or any group who grows their own food, or wants to grow food and wants to promote growing food.
The deadline for applications is the end of January 2017 and applications can be made online via www.giyinternational.org/energia-get-ireland-growing.html and by following #GetIrelandGrowing
