Harvest

Harvest is a new city-wide food growing project, funded by the Lottery's Local Food Fund.

The Harvest project encourages people to engage in food growing activities in their local community. The Project  encourages greater community involvement through developing relationships, resource sharing and co-ordinating activities across Exeter. It mainly targets people who are disadvantaged, socially excluded or who live in disadvantaged urban areas.

Harvest encourages people to grow their own food through:

• Providing containers and compost for people to grow food on balconies, patios and indoors
• Providing seeds, tools and training
• Making use of the knowledge and skills within the community, to share with others
• Engaging schools in food growing activities
• Exploring how land can be made available for community food growing - this could be land owned by Exeter City Council, private individuals or by businesses
• Promoting healthy living principles and greater awareness of environmental issues
• Promoting the cost benefits, convenience and satisfaction of growing food

Harvest encourages people to come together through:

• Matching people with land they cannot manage with those who cannot get an allotment, to set up a mutually beneficial arrangement
• Growing food on land within their community, along with others
• Exchanging ideas, learning from each other, helping each other with practical tasks, sharing tools, swapping seeds, plants etc and forming positive relationships with their neighbours
• Co-ordinating a city-wide celebration in the Autumn that encourages people to share the food they have grown by eating a meal together made from their produce

Harvest aims to:

• Promote volunteering and community involvement
• Promote healthy eating and exercise
• Enable people to learn new skills and improve confidence
• Reduce the cost of healthy food
• Promote greater awareness of environmental issues
• Reduce the environmental impact of producing food

This is a community-led project, and once established, it is hoped that community members will continue to run and develop the activities.

Please click here to view the Harvest leaflet 

We are currently recruiting Project Workers and plan to start project activities in April 2010.
 

For further details, contact Carole Pilley, Community Development Manager on 01392 205807 or email carole@eci.org.uk.