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Tuesday Feb 28, 2012

Growing Communties

Being a dedicated volunteer on a busy community project sometimes means working weekends and evenings... but these "overtime" duties are normally some of the most rewarding activities, and, in my experience, more often than not you get fed too! A recent weekend event I attended was called Growing Communities which provided an opportunity for the established and successful groups involved in food growing in our area to share their knowledge, wisdom and past mistakes with other groups or individuals who are thinking of or in the process of starting similar ventures into food growing.

Many communities and groups are looking to grow their own food, with many diverse motivations. It seems to me that the Kirklees area is very progressive when it comes to this kind of project, and the stories of food growing in Newsome in particular are worth sharing. Through a series of workshops, people who had been involved from the very start of the venture spoke about how they initially found out what people wanted and expected from a community food growing project (if indeed they wanted one at all!), the early days of Growing Newsome (as the project came to be named) and how the project progressed and defined itself. An important milestone was when the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust finally took on Stirley Community Farm. This couldn't have happened without all the research having been done first and without a receptive and enthusiastic community. So several years down the line, this is where I become involved... It's wonderful being a part of a project like Stirley Community Farm in the early stages of development but it's amazing to look back at all the hard work and effort that went into working with the community to make sure that the farm really fit the bill. Putting in the groundwork means that now it's the kind of project which is truly a pleasure to work on when the community as delighted with the project as we are.

It was great to find out more about the roots of community growing in Newsome and I know that most people who attended got lots of ideas and inspiration. At lunchtime we feasted on soup made from locally grown ingredients, including leeks from the farm, and bread from the Handmade Bakery in Transition Town Slaithwaite, who make all their bread in traditional ways using ingredients from Yorkshire. What better way to really bring home the power of local food than tucking into some?

I always enjoy meeting new people working on similar projects and to see familiar faces from other projects in Kirklees to compare notes with. There are a number of food growing projects in the area but one of the things I think works particularly well is that they all have slightly different aims and perspectives, and in that way, each project compliments one another perfectly. At Stirley Community Farm we're looking at food growing from an environmental perspective with a big focus on providing skills and education through volunteering, whereas other groups prioritise community cohesion, health, and wellbeing as their main reason for being. Because of this, we can all work together and share what we learn along the way...

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 7:47 PM )
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Sunday Feb 12, 2012

A Day Off Well Spent

Guess how I spent my day off from Stirley Farm this week? Volunteering somewhere else! Since September last year, I've been getting increasingly involved with Oxfam and last Monday I went to tell a group of 16 year olds in Barnsley what Oxfam is all about. I've always thought Oxfam was a great organisation, but my interest in them was reignited after hearing about their current campaign – GROW – which is all about making the global food system fairer. As I was getting more involved with local food, it seemed relevant and interesting to also be thinking globally at the same time.

I applied to take part in Oxfam's Change training programme for campaigners, and I was lucky enough to get a place. Before the training, my first campaigning experience on GROW was at RHS at Tatton Park, where Oxfam had a "climate change garden" called When the Waters Rise which won a gold medal and was really imaginative and inspiring. When the time came around for the training weekend, I was a little nervous. I thought that everyone else would have a lot more experience of campaigning, activism and working with Oxfam than me. Soon after I arrived I realised that my worries were unfounded, levels of experience and involvement were varied but we all had lots in common – bags of energy, enthusiasm and plenty to learn from each other! After spending four days in an "alan partridge-esque" roadside motel in Loughborough, we all left with 30 new friends, oodles of passion and a head full of ideas. The first thing I did when I got home was to start a blog and set up an appointment to visit my MP. I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do, but I had to take a measured approach and think about what I could fit in around my existing commitments with Stirley Farm. I used my blog to campaign during GROW week, where I kept a food diary and spoke about various issues surrounding the different food I was eating. I spent a couple of evenings campaigning at Oxjam festivals in Huddersfield and Leeds - speaking to hundreds of people about the GROW campaign left me a little horse! After meeting with my MP, he invited me to shadow him in Westminster for a week which was incredible. I also did training to become a school speaker which is how I ended up speaking at Wellbeing Week at Barnsley College. Hopefully the students left the room knowing a little bit more about the work that Oxfam do internationally and in the UK, and maybe even got a bit of inspiration about how they could get involved.

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 3:39 PM )
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Friday Feb 03, 2012

Getting a Buzz from Training

Working as a volunteer is a good way of getting on the job experience, but if you're lucky enough then you might get to do some training and qualifications as well. Through volunteering I've gained First Aid and Brushcutter qualifications and learnt about many interesting things from Forest Gardening to how to make yurt wheel. This week I went on a course about Bee Keeping specifically designed for community volunteers. The course was at Trafford Hall. which is the home of the National Communities Resource Centre. Having won some funding from the Tudor Trust, they are offering bargain courses for community volunteers, which include food and accommodation, and have a linked small grants scheme where volunteers can apply for up to £500 towards their project. The whole programme seems like an excellent way to give volunteers more skills and greater ownership over the projects they are involved in. It was also a great way to get well fed for a couple of days! I've got another course in March and I can't wait to have another volunteer's "mini-break"! 

The course itself was very interesting and informative, and extremely thorough! We had two days of learning the theory behind bee keeping, from the biology to the practicalities, and in May we will return to have a practical session, although I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to put some of the things I've learned into practice before then. We are due to have some hives on Stirley Farm, and following the course I feel much better equipped to get involved and hopefully if we get the grant we will literally be much better equipped too! Doing the course actually made me feel very nostalgic about university. I studied biology and on my year abroad I did a research project on ants, which have a very similar social structure to bees. It felt great to get back to the classroom! I'd love to do a Masters degree but I know that it would be mostly for my own enjoyment, and that volunteering is the best thing that I can do for my career at the moment. Whilst my training allowance won't get me through a MSc, I'm very happy to be learning about bees and meeting lots of other people working on community projects.

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 9:51 PM )
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