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Green Space Community Growing Project in Warrenpoint is this week celebrating the fantastic input from all their volunteers and also celebrating being the winner in Dobbies 'Helping your Community Grow' competition. The group are hosting the volunteer celebration on Tuesday to mark Volunteers Week and they all were delighted to hear they had won an award.
A spokesperson for Green Space said "We continue to be creative and visionary, and seek funding and support to develop programmes and opportunities which are relevant, flexible and responsive to community needs. To that end we applied to an open competition with Dobbies Garden Centre, this was a UK wide competition with thousands of applicants. We were surprised to reach a shortlist of 3 projects in Northern Ireland, there was then a public vote and we were up against two much bigger organisations, so we were even more surprise when we actually won and became the recipients of Dobbies’ local Helping Your Community Grow winner"
Green Space Community Growing Project was set up in November 2022 in Warrenpoint. Their aim is to create a welcoming space, where people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds can come together to participate in creative nature-based health and wellbeing activities. Their goal is to promote and facilitate the exchange of knowledge, skills and ideas on all aspects of horticulture, wellbeing and biodiversity, through on and off-site activities, workshops and events.
Activities include growing food and flowers, creating and maintaining wildlife habitats, and increasing biodiversity. The project seeks to reconnect people with the natural world. The group encourages their members to live healthier more sustainable lives. By growing food and looking after nature, they try to address issues such as food poverty, healthy and seasonal eating and the social aspect of food sharing.
The spokesperson concludes "This is not just a gardening project, the social, environmental and health benefits are immeasurable, it provides a mechanism for engagement that is completely inclusive and meaningful."
