Local groups growing places with sustainable food projects

Hannah McNamara

Five local groups have benefited to the tune of €40,000 thanks to a unique initiative that engages and inspires communities around Ireland to come together to grow.

Grow It Yourself (GIY) and tech giant Meta have collaborated to Get Meath Growing this year, part of GIY's national Get Ireland Growing campaign, a project that aims to enable residents in Meath to engage in a positive food-growing experience and to participate in sustainable action.

Get Meath Growing with Meta and GIY encourages and enables the people of Meath to start growing food in their own community, or where they are already partaking in food growing to bring that activity to the next level.

Speaking about the project, Michael Kelly founder of GIY said: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to further engage and support local food-growing communities and support their initiative with the backing of Meta. These projects have a real ability to transform and develop food growing across regions and they are vitally important for the future of our local food system.”

The initiative culminated this year in the 2023 Get Meath Growing Awards to celebrate champions of community growing in Meath. These were held in Trim on 16th November.

Speaking about the project, Cllr Ronan Moore who was involved in a Meath County Council localising Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project in Trim, where three of the winning groups are based and which included a food growing objective said: “Socially, environmentally and economically, growing your own food is a wonderful initiative to undertake. And to do that in the company of fellow residents, club colleagues or community association members is really something special. We are delighted that this wonderful project led by GIY and META will now help us achieve another aim from our localising SDG’s project."

During the awards event, five different community groups were awarded as winners for their participation and growing success during the project. Each award-winning community was presented with a prize to the value of €8,000 to help them to continue investing in, and growing, their gardens for the future. This included vouchers for growing or gardening materials, as well as support to create planting plans for their community growing space.

The award-winning groups include Silverlawn Estate in Navan, Old Balreask Woods Community Garden in also Navan and three projects in Trim which include, Trim Women's Shed and Prosper Meath, The Gallops Residents Association and Trim Celtic AFC.

The exciting occasion was made possible through the generous support of Meta, empowering over 30 community groups throughout Meath to participate in the transformative journey to Get Meath Growing.

Caroline Smith from one of the winning groups, ‘Trim Women’s Shed’ said: “Having the garden available in Prosper Meath means we will have the space to grow our own flowers, fruit and vegetables which we will be able to use in the future in a number of workshops such as Healthy eating on a Budget, jam making, gardening and we can use the flowers and foliage in our flower arranging workshops and so much more. We are extremely grateful to receive this award and we will make full use of it.”

Meta has been part of the community in Meath since breaking ground on its Clonee data centre in 2016. They are committed to supporting the long-term development of Meath and are keen to support local community initiatives like this one

To date, Meta has provided over €3.1m in direct grants and funding for over 70 not-for-profits, school and community initiatives in Meath including support for Meath Library to establish a laptop for loan service, the redevelopment of Dunboyne Playground and Skatepark, and technology funding for Prosper Meath and Trim Family Resource Centre, among others.