Co-op Warm Spaces Funding Boost has provided £500 of match funding
Going back to the roots - Grassroots projects
Loughborough, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Providing tangible climate solutions to positively impact mental and physical wellbeing, supporting E.Midlands community grassroots projects
Hannah Fields and VegVan Community Farm - A force for good
We are raising money to secure the future and longevity of 2 permaculture sites in the East Midlands, providing an integral wellbeing and education service to the community and young. In raising money for the land and the security of our projects, more people can actively get involved in climate combatting activities and tangibly alleviate climate anxiety by getting involved at a local grassroots level. Climate anxiety is understandable worry for the future of the earth based on all the obvious environmental changes and not knowing how to shift that feeling for the greater good.
We want to extend our services and offer more to more people.
Our projects and services offer far reaching support to our local community through their times of crisis, which has worsened since the cost of living, energy and fuel crisis, as a community, team and individually. Our vegetables are sold to the public and our surplus goes to soup kitchens and hostels. As part of our services, we have food, tea and cake available. Our services build relationship to decrease symptoms of depression, stress and anxiety. We offer warm spaces with the cabins on site, some of our volunteers and service users are homeless, suffering with mental health, physical health and/or malnutrition, poverty and feelings of isolation. Our spaces offer people an opportunity to be involved in growing vegetables for self-sufficiency and rewilding which is an opportunity alleviate climate and social anxiety which has increased in the general population but especially in our community since noting limiting supplies, political changes, and the constraints/ pressures of the pandemic.�
We want to:
- Maintain vital existing services in the face of rising energy costs
We have found since the pandemic and during the energy crisis more people have been asking for our help or to participate in our services and whilst we have accommodated willingly, our resources, both personal and financial have suffered so in order to continue we must be able to cover our service costs.�
- Make the community space that you operate from more welcoming
We have cabins, a community caf� and open spaces through which operate an open-door policy to accommodate more people as well as the aforementioned benefits to service users or customers. These cabins have needed heating during the cold weather for people coming to the projects and so we need to top up fuel and we can only be as accommodating with further financial input. Also, we would like to promote these services so that more people can access the respite from the weather, financial and food crises. It costs us money to produce the vegetables but not much more to produce more stock and that is what we would like to do to ensure more people have access a good balanced diet despite socioeconomic status. We can also then produce more meals and supply more to the community soup kitchens and hostels as we are already doing.�
- Increase opening times or extend services
Our services are often operating on a tight time scale and budget. Unfortunately, that means that we cannot operate at full capacity all the time. We would like to extend our service to reach more people and be able to meet current crisis demand. The value of community and improved wellbeing shouldn't underestimate and so we strive to impact more people with those benefits and advantages.�
We are special - USP
This project is unique in that we are raising money to keep our grassroots projects self-sufficient, so we no longer rely on grant funding to enable our community to get access to services that are not available through other means. We are running out of time to act, and our services give people the incentive and space to take positive action. We are not competitive and that is rare in a world of business. We see that we need to work together to solve some of society?s problems and the more of us there are the better. Therefore, the more we raise, the more we can share, the more we conquer and the more we provide.�
What we're doing and how you can help
We are speaking to the public, and all small, medium and large businesses in the East Midlands, such as Rolls Royce and asking them to match fund the contributions from their employees. We are asking everyone to donate a minimum of 50p, many offering �5 - �10 per employee and asking the leaders of those organisations to get involved in our permaculture community activities, positively accessing this facility and engaging in corporate social responsibility. This in turn positively impacts over 10,000 people through an effective resource of materials, finance and advice across our network and the wider community whilst helping to rewild the East Midlands which is a great start for the UK and can be a model for others to recreate.
Anyone can donate but these guys have got to listen, it?s time for change!
The big transport, logistics and engineering companies generally have operations that cause them to unfairly resource from our earth and often create mass pollutants and waste, unethical business practice at best. Similarly, they are huge players in our current systems and networks so the business will continue as usual until it is too late. If they agree to what we propose we can help them to offset their tax, amend their operations, whilst continuing to carry out our much needed education provision on our care farm and gardens, boosting the wellbeing of our community.
Why us and why grassroots
The world as we know it is struggling without the basic education in nature, natural patterns and wellbeing, we would have automatically learnt these values and behaviours as we were growing up from our ancestors.
We now give a new lease of life to this undervalued education. Hannah Fields and VegVan Community Farm CIC focuses on community, permaculture and wellbeing through nurturing practices. We are a part of a large network of grassroots projects throughout the East Midlands who are reinstalling these values and encouraging people to adopt these principles in their everyday life.
Hannah Fields is situated in Littleover, Derby and has already involved local community volunteers; they hold a men?s group session once a week, they have a forest school, people in need of care and help with symptoms such as depression come to grow veg as volunteers, they have an open-door policy so that members of the community can walk in and enjoy their space at any point during their opening hours.
VegVan Community Farm is situated in the middle of all three East Midland counties; Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. We are at the first stage of permaculture design and infrastructure roll out. We are already acting as an education hub and a place for people to come and share their knowledge with others. We are a hive for other charities who need an outdoor space to carry out their workshops and activities.
Grassroots is a commonly termed name for people who are connected to, and working with, nature and people, in a decentralised autonomous way. We do not compete with each other, we use a shared resource and we want only to benefit our community and environment through the tenets of earth care, people care and fair shares. There are at least 100 of us in the East Midlands and as a result we have power in numbers. Thankfully the tide is turning in our favour and people are starting to see this is the only way to go, if we want to secure our future and survival.
What will we do with your money - powerful clever stuff
We are teaming together to display our skills in these areas and to show the success of our projects within the community, our environment and in nature. We are using our strengths to raise money for our own projects whilst also serving our network of other grassroots projects. We want to raise enough money to continue to do the good work that we do and to pay for a team of grant writers who will ensure our future is financially secure. We just want to do more for more people and it's not possible as part of the current system. The money will also enable the public to access all grassroots projects within the East Midlands, dependent on your location, alleviating climate anxiety and giving people tangible ways to contribute to the community and environment.
How can we help you going forwards - to live, to love, to learn and to leave your legacy!!
We want to create an app for the grassroots platform so people can join in, book events, activities, forest school, afterschool clubs and workshops for themselves and their families. They can even donate, book our shuttle service, meals and veg boxes via our platform at the click of a finger on their phones.
What have we learned, the motivation - nailed it!!
We have learned that community is the very essence of the human species and in order to restore nature and provide future generations with a great legacy to aspire to, we must work together. The impact that we can have on a grassroots level is massive and if we continue to inspire others to be more involved and take action to have the greatest impact on their own and others lives, the better our future will be.
We have learned that we must share the resources that we have with each other in order to have the happiest lives possible and that people care negates neglect that many members of society are feeling at the most basic of need levels.
Children often think that their food comes from the supermarket, and we are on a mission to relearn forgotten skills and teach children about nature, food and nutrition giving them the best chances in the future and setting them up for success. If those values are learned at a young age the chances of them continuing to nurture our environment and themselves into to the future are significantly higher. Giving everyone the right to free food, better health and wellbeing benefits us all, ensuring everyone gets fed and nature can begin to rewild and restore itself.
We need you and unless your life is about to drastically change or our government actually listens, you need us, so please please listen and make the impact today by donating to your future!
This project successfully funded on 31st March 2023