Food, growing & community.
Our connection with land and the local community is vital for our wellbeing. Food autonomy is the topic of our times. Community projects, particularly those which involve sharing and offer alternative education spaces are especially important. You can click on the button to send your giving suggestions.
Oracle Girl giving | Environmental & conservation | Media, creative & technology | Dignity for all beings
De Warmoes
Mar 2024 | Website
Growing fruits and vegetables traditionally as they did centuries ago in this historical horticulture urban oasis in the Netherlands. Using a variety of crops and cultivation methods from different periods. Offering workshops on topics such as storage and processing of the harvest. Hoping to build a sustainable new barn to continue receiving groups, including children, offering a space for volunteers and including a cold room to store fresh produce.
The Garden Project
Feb 2024 | Website
Supporting local youth, and their peninsula-wide communities in Maine, USA with a variety of youth-led summer camps and year round after school programmes. Nurturing their understanding of who they are from the inside out and how to balance that in relation to everything that surrounds them externally. Using an intuitive blend of restoration, permaculture, and biodynamic practices to care for an edible landscape that includes raised vegetable beds, a magical herb circle, and a pollinator flower garden.
A Farm Less Ordinary
Feb 2024 | Website
Providing employment and a welcoming community to people with developmental and intellectual disabilities in Virginia, USA. Learning the skills to work on the farm, offering people the respect they deserve as contributing members of society and local food producers. The growers, who are always the primary customers of the produce, learn how to grow using organic and sustainable methods, including the use of organic compost, cover crops, minimum tillage, companion cropping, and a focus on attracting pollinators and 'good pests'.
ReFeed
Feb 2024 | Website
Creating zero waste, circular food systems to repair the food system in British Columbia, Canada. Capturing and using 100% of the nutrition found in unused food by feeding people, helping farmers supplement their livestock food sources and boosting soil microbiology. Serving food banks and charities by providing them with some of the rescued produce.
Hayes Farm
Jan 2024 | Website
Aiming to foster a thriving and resilient culture of local food growers and eaters through a community farm and education space in Fredericton, New Brunswick in Canada. Promoting a regenerative farming model to advance food security and food sovereignty, socioeconomic responsibility, environmental accountability and prosperity of purpose in the local community. Integrating Wabanaki wisdom & food ways, principles of land-based learning, and deep-rooted connection and responsibility to nature in order to achieve their aims.
Altruist Relief Kitchen (ARK)
Jan 2024 | Website
Manufacturing and deploying sustainable structures in many countries, including the Ukraine, that can be transported into remote or devastated locations to allow for the provision of basic services - like food, water, shelter, and medical care. Setting up off-grid, wood-fired field kitchens, working without the need for fossil fuels or electricity.
Mini Farm Project
Jan 2024 | Website
Growing and donating fresh produce to local charities and food security agencies to support Australian households impacted by the rising living costs and supply chain issues. Providing vulnerable communities with continual access to good-quality and nutritious food in all seasons. Establishing a network of charity farms using a range of low-impact growing and farming methods.
World Central Kitchen
Nov 2023 | Website
Responding to natural disasters, man-made crises, and humanitarian emergencies around the world with a team of food first responders. Mobilizing to get meals to the people who need them most by deploying a model of quick action; leveraging local resources and adapting in real-time to rapidly provide communities with nourishing meals in a time of crisis.
Badgers Food Forest
Nov 2023 | Website
Applying permaculture principles of 'Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share'. Establishing wildlife ponds to provide habitat for a wide range of flora and fauna. Providing sponsored growing plots for growers on low incomes. Developing community access to this new project by improving the safe entrance to the site and making a disabled-access compost toilet and community tool shed.
BridgIT Water Foundation
Nov 2023 | Website
Providing suitable, accessible and sustainable water solutions to the poorest and most marginalised people in developing countries, including in the highly challenging landscapes in rural Nepal and remote rural areas in Uganda. Establishing community participation and ownership, such as training on sustainability strategies to plan for future maintenance and repairs. Improving education by reducing the incidence of water-borne illnesses and helping attendance, especially for young girls who were otherwise responsible for collecting the water.
Orto Foresta
Nov 2023 | Website
Growing fruit and vegetables in an agroforestry system that regenerates the ecosystem, soil health, biodiversity and community, in Florence, Italy. Integrating the methods of biointensive no-dig market gardening and syntropic agriculture to grow and sell fresh produce locally. Hosting regenerative horticulture courses.
Cowichan Green Community
Nov 2023 | Website
Cultivating food, community, and resilience by focusing on environmental sustainability in the Cowichan Region in Canada. Improving food security by developing strong relationships with local food producers, increasing capacity for local food production (both urban and rural), and empowering people with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to feed their community.
Rooted Community Food
Nov 2023 | Website
Growing and donating food to community projects in Eastbourne, UK. Running a community hub initiative where allotment neighbours can drop off excess produce that would otherwise go to waste and redistribute it to community fridges. Inspiring children to learn about growing food with their Roots and Boots gardening program.
Arche Noah
Sep 2023 | Website
Preserving and developing agricultural diversity. Safeguarding endangered crops through seed banks and exchanges to bring traditional and rare varieties back into gardens and onto the market. Advocating for policies that promote biodiversity, ensure healthy and tasty food and protect the rights of small-scale farmers.
Maui Food Bank
Sep 2023 | Website
Helping anyone in Maui County who is at risk of going hungry. Collecting and distributing safe and nutritious food through community partnerships. Supporting those affected by the recent Maui fires by working with farmers and wholesalers to make fresh produce available to those in need.
Root Connections
Aug 2023 | Website
Improving local health and wellbeing. Farming produce together in a local community garden enabling volunteers and residents to support unique direct access hostel providing emergency housing for men and women aged 25 and over who are homeless or rough sleeping.
The Free Folk Project
Aug 2023 | Website
Connecting people who share a collective desire to create a fairer world. Sharing values and practices around health, education, growing and house building with likeminded people in a community on the ground. Developing an online community that encourages free, unbridled expression and shares valuable content helping others to learn and grow alongside the project.
Scotland The Bread
Aug 2023 | Website
Growing quality, organic grain in Scotland using regenerative farming practices. Supplying grains to bakers with the common purposes of nourishment, sustainability and food sovereignty. Supporting a network of communities to grow wheat plots, increase community breadmaking skills and improve local food resilience.
The Pollinators
July 2023 | Website
Supporting and connecting people and initiatives that protect and stimulate pollinators and biodiversity. Sowing flowers and planting trees to help landscape restoration and the protection of pollinating insects such as bees, bumblebees, butterflies and beetles.
Park Slope Food Coop
July 2023 | Website
Member-owned and operated food store in Brooklyn, New York, offering an alternative to a commercial profit-oriented business. Striving to be an ethical employer, with an emphasis on organic, minimally processed and healthful foods, members work together and share responsibilities and benefits equally. Contributing a small number of hours on a regular basis which helps to minimise payroll costs and enables prices to remain low.
LA Compost
July 2023 | Website
Supporting a healthy transition where food is never wasted, but returned to the soil for the next cycle of life. Creating spaces in LA for local compost access and engagement, restorative practices, and community empowerment. Redistributing nutrient-dense compost to help local ecosystems thrive.
Open Table
Jun 2023 | Website
Rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste and transforming it into delicious meals for the community, while helping others reduce their food waste! Offering welcoming community lunches, free food markets and no waste cooking workshops in North Fitzroy, Australia.
Golden Heart Community
Jun 2023 | Website
Supporting parents who came together to form parent-led, home school enrichment programmes for their children in Nevada county, California. Providing a sense of community and help such as scholarships and small grants for supplies and specific projects.
Birth & Beyond: Sacred Songs for Mother & Baby
Apr 2023 | Website
Supporting the creation of an album of sacred songs dedicated to pregnant women, mothers, partners and their children. Sharing songs that originate from around the world. Offering projects that help keep alive ancient traditions in birthkeeping and midwifery.
Natural Farming Center
Apr 2023 | Website
Spreading the 'no method' natural agriculture technique of Masanobu Fukuoka in Turkey, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Kenya. Restoring soil harmed by modern farming methods and regreening deserts. Supporting the global education work of Kutluhan Özdemir.
Food Is Free Inc
Mar 2023 | Website
Creating a food secure, inclusive, sustainable and healthy community. Providing a magical space for people to drop off, or collect, free nutritious food (veggies, fruit, herbs only) and make neighbourhood connections. Building community resilience and environmental awareness by providing education about living sustainably, growing and sharing fresh nutritious food.
Food 4 Thought
Mar 2023 | Website
Matching apartment dwellers who have a desire to learn and experience growing an organic vegetable garden but do not have access to a garden space, with homeowners who have an under utilized garden space to share. Providing community members with education, courses and workshops in sustainable living, permaculture and organic gardening.
The Vale Pantry
Mar 2023 | Website
A social supermarket / community food store that offers memberships to any family who struggle financially and who have had to cut back on food in order to try and make ends meet. Valuing the dignity of all individuals and working to strive to promote their independence. Supporting the long journey to help families and households get back on their feet.
Common Ground Collective
Mar 2023 | Website
Transforming Maui into a bountiful and productive island that benefits both the environment and the people who live here, for generations to come. Through the promotion of agricultural / business education in real-life settings, and hands-on assistance; elevating distressed and underprivileged members of community that are not otherwise able to receive assistance or obtain education in these areas.
The Community Farm
Feb 2023 | Website
Providing people in Somerset, UK with high quality organic vegetables. Modelling an open farm, producing local food, involving lots of people, and caring for the natural world as an antidote to the harmful industrialised, global food system. Creating a special place where over 1000 people each year enjoy learning and working on the land. Supporting those who are socially isolated and / or experiencing mild depression, low mood, anxiety or stress with therapeutic horticulture, conservation and mindfulness programmes.
Griffin Growers
Feb 2023 | Website
A garden demands presence. It wants you to be wholly and fully there and you will then bear witness to the miracle of nature. If you just listen, the answers simply come. This is about trust. In the strength of community we realised we could bridge inequality and bring everybody together around food: creating steps between all the separateness. We can share our talents through the growing of our food whilst tending to the plants and soil. We can create opportunities for exchange through kindness and willingness to help.
Grey Bears
Feb 2023 | Website
Improving the health and wellbeing of seniors and our Santa Cruz, USA community through food and meal deliveries, volunteerism, resource conservation and recycling. Promoting good nutrition, activity and social connection as the perfect recipe for healthy aging. Repurposing donated household items via our thrift store while reducing our collective carbon footprint. Diverting 8,000 tons of material from landfills each year through 3 recycling centers. Transforming 60 tons of food scraps at our composting site into high quality compost for sale in the thrift store.
St Ives Community Composting
Jan 2023 | Website
Collecting and composting food waste within Cornwall, UK to offer microbes, nutrients and diversity from composted food waste back to the soil. Collecting food waste on an electric bike; taking it to the local orchard - a community site open to all - then composting and using it for a vegetable garden. Minimising the use of unnecessary resources utilised in transporting food waste to the incinerator. Supporting others with food growing by creating enough compost to offer some back to the community on a donation-only basis. Sharing knowledge so that more compost at home.
Common Unity
Jan 2023 | Website
Through our new building, The Remakery, rebuilding, restructuring and redefining old, out-of-date things. Celebrating the abundance of gifts in our community and working hard to address challenges affecting everyone. Creating a new way, starting with the best of what we already know, and the best of what we already have to share knowledge, time and skills for learning. Initiating, partnering, supporting and providing an umbrella for locally owned enterprises to grow food, skills, leadership and enterprise.
Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008)
One of the most important figures of our times, Masanobu was a humble Japanese farmer who experienced the 'nothingness' of reality and emphasised man's intimate relationship with nature.
Quail Springs Permaculture
Dec 2022 | Website
Empowering students of all ages and backgrounds with knowledge, skills and inspiration essential to cultivating ecological and social health. Envisioning an equitable global community that shares the bounty of this living planet and the responsibility to tend to its health. Fostering positive change through our relationships with one another and our ecologies.
Fair Frome
Dec 2022 | Website
Providing a food, baby basics, and furniture bank for people living in Frome UK and the surrounding areas. Providing community members with a hot meal and creating a space where people can gather, share stories, food and make connections. Educating about the causes of poverty and deprivation. Championing greater financial, educational, social and health equality.
The People's Food & Farming Alliance Blueprint
Dec 2022 | Website
Created for the people, by the people to counter artificially created food shortages and to protect crops. Healing the soil, protecting and supporting farmers who are growing healthy natural food. Encouraging people to grow their own food and guiding them on how to do this in their own gardens as well as in communities. Encouraging more humane treatment of animals.
Coexist Community Kitchen
Dec 2022 | Website
Providing hundreds of nourishing, healthy meals every week. Sharing food together and teaching weekly cookery classes specifically for people who experience social marginalisation in Bristol UK. Helping the community to build stronger connections with others.
Feed Me Bellarine
Dec 2022 | Website
Turning leftover food into nutritious meals and delivering to people in need across the Bellarine Peninsula, Australia. Keeping waste out of landfill especially organics which can feed many people. Cooking raw ingredients into meals so others can take care of their lives. Using a Pay As You Feel donation concept.
The Farmlink Project
Nov 2022 | Website
Combatting food insecurity by connecting farms with surplus to food banks to feed people in need. Acting as the “link” connecting the broken supply chains in the agricultural and food access industries. Putting in place systems to streamline the supply chain so that zero percent, rather than 30 to 40 percent, of food grown in the United States goes to waste.
Magic Breakfast
Nov 2022 | Website
Ensuring that no child is too hungry to learn by providing healthy breakfast food and expert support to help identify and reach those pupils at risk of hunger. Working with over 1,000 primary, secondary and Special Educational Needs schools, plus Pupil Referral Units, offering breakfasts to over 200,000 children in UK schools each school day.
Irish Seed Savers
Sep 2022 | Website
Protecting Ireland’s food crop heritage for future generations. Focusing on the conservation of heirloom vegetable seeds and Irish heritage apple trees. Maintaining the country’s only public seed bank, with over 600 non-commercially available varieties of seed. Housing the national collection of Irish heritage apple trees in our orchards, with over 180+ unique varieties.
SEED Soul Food Cafe
Sep 2022 | Website
Growing personal, household and community resilience in Cape Town, South Africa. Resilience through permaculture, used as an optimistic tool for designing highly productive human and environmental systems. Preparing youth for work in the local green economy, inspiring and empowering them to create thriving communities focused on abundant food systems, appropriate technologies, and social innovation while supporting local entrepreneurship and transformative education.
Dream of Wild Health
Aug 2022 | Website
Restoring health and well-being in the Native American community by recovering knowledge of and access to healthy indigenous foods, medicines and lifeways. Growing strong leaders, rebuilding food systems, and supporting youth learn to plant, grow, harvest, and cook healthy meals while preserving seeds and cultural knowledge for the future.
Native Seeds S*E*A*R*C*H
Aug 2022 | Website
Conserving and promoting the arid-adapted crop diversity of the American Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security. Seeking to find, protect and preserve the seeds of the people of the Greater Southwest so that these arid adapted crops may benefit all peoples and nourish a changing world.
Horton Community Farm
Aug 2022 | Website
An inspirational permaculture centre for food growing and community resilience in Bradford, UK raising the profile of open-pollinated, locally adapted seeds, and healthy food systems that are embedded in biocultural diversity. Helping people to connect and develop their growing to include seed saving. Bringing together forest school, horticultural therapy, wildlife, food growing and volunteering. Working with families on a low income, asylum seekers, refugees, and people with disabilities.
Buddy System
Jul 2022 | Website
Reminding people that food is a right, not a privilege. Fighting food insecurity by creating unique and innovative ways to engage our community, empowering neighbours to support neighbors, beginning with access to free, healthy food. Changing the landscape of food injustice, existing in food deserts with a simple message: "Take what you need, leave what you can." Maybe you could do this in your local area too: click here to find out how. To find out more about feeding the most vulnerable: click here.
Movement Ground Farm
Jul 2022 | Website
Recultivating the central role of food and land in nourishing our bodies, strengthening our communities, and growing a more just world. Making a world possible where all individuals and families are empowered, sustained, and grounded by an intimate connection to food, and community. Joining those who have historically been uprooted and displaced due to land theft, slavery, war, gentrification, development, and environmental destruction, to land as a source of healing, sustenance, empowerment, reflection, and guidance.
Pluma Coffee Project
Apr 2022 | Website
Transforming the global coffee industry by developing a sustainable value chain of coffee in Pluma Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Mexico that is not only good for the environment, the community and the economy but is also inclusive of disabled people, from farmer to consumer.
Supporting natural agriculture & community food projects
Sarmado Sibley Conscious Plant Based Nutrition | Dragonflies Home Education | Griffin Growers | Haven Earth | Hazelwood | Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture | In Line With Nature | Seven Spokes Home Education | Squash Nutrition | The Long Table | Weggeefwinkel
Charity Seeds
Mar 2022 | Website
Bringing sustainable small-scale organic farming based on biointensive farming methods to schools in Guatemala, Columbia and Kenya. Teaching children how to grow their own food and learn about cooking, preparation and nutrition. Grassroots food security and food sovereignty for the future.
