Helen Murphy of Glenamaddy Community Garden has been named Connacht Community Hero in this year's Get Ireland Growing awards.
Glenamaddy Community Garden is a food-growing garden which aims to bring the people of the community together to encourage community sustainability. Diversity is also a focus for the group, with members ranging from playschool age to 88 years old, including new members of the community from Ukraine.
In April, the Energia Get Ireland Growing initiative announced a giveaway of GIY community GROWBoxes across Ireland worth €42,500. More than 800 communities took part, with groups ranging from community gardens to groups of friends, badminton clubs to Women’s Sheds and more. Using these kits, communities across Ireland were encouraged to get together to become more sustainable and connected through growing food together.
As the seed and information packs were distributed across the country, new food growers took up the challenges of the competition. Members of the public also had the opportunity to nominate someone for going above and beyond to support others to grow with the chance to be named their province’s Energia Get Ireland Growing Community Hero.
Six winners have been identified as the national Energia Get Ireland Growing Champions of 2022. Each of the winners has been awarded prizes and funding from Energia to enable them to continue and further develop each of their food-growing projects.
“The pandemic has truly shifted the mindset of the nation when it comes to learning to grow food and we are seeing more and more people who began growing at home during lockdowns bring that knowledge out into their community and begin growing and at GIY, we are delighted to support their efforts," said Michael Kelly, founder of GIY, who presented the awards.
"We are delighted to see such huge levels of interest in joining in the Energia Get Ireland Growing initiative from communities across the country. We would like to congratulate each of the Community Heros and the community project winners on their growing success, each of the new champions has been awarded support and funding from Energia to enable them to further develop each of their food growing projects and we cant wait to see how these evolve.”
Energia Get Ireland Growing was first launched by Energia in partnership with GIY in 2016 to promote community food growing projects nationwide. For further details see www.getirelandgrowing.ie
