Crowdfunding used for new community gardens

A north London community centre has launched a campaign to crowdfund an organic food garden in a community centre that will grow diverse global foods, train locals and generate income for the charity that runs it.

Tottenham’s Selby Centre is transforming its grounds into a new community garden where locals will produce and prepare organic foods. Crowdfunding allows projects to generate funds online, pooling small amounts of money from locals, strangers, businesses and even councils.

The Selby Centre is using Spacehive.com to raise the £11,500 needed to transform the Selby grounds. Currently the centre has raised £2,732 with local councillor and Cabinet Member for the Environment, Nilgun Canver, being the first to donate.

“Concerns over the drop in giving for the third sector and pressures from cuts to the areas in which we work, especially North London, mean that we have to be more innovative and find new ways of raising funds needed,” said Dexter Kelly, Volunteer Project Manager, Selby Centre.

“More than about growing food, it’s about creating a legacy for Tottenham and a source of pride for our children in years to come,” he added. “Using Spacehive has given us a platform to bring people together and generate interest through the internet that we would have previously not been able to create.”

The Global Garden, Global Kitchen project will grow an array of rare produce, from blue carrots to red lettuce, which will act as the basis of the Global Kitchen. The centre will host cooking classes and offer hands-on skills for healthy living to the community. They will also sell produce in their on-site café and a new outdoor market to raise funds to keep the centre, which is 70 percent self-funded, alive.

“We’re looking at getting funding by April, ready to grow as the cycle needs to be planted by April or May in order for us to be able to share the first foods of the project by the end of the year,” added Kelly.

The centre will encourage local people to use their newfound cooking skills at home and intends to have local children deliver fresh food parcels to vulnerable people in local council estates.

Tottenham, as well as being one of the UK’s most diverse communities with 40 percent of the population an ethnic minority, is also one of the UK’s most deprived boroughs with eight out of ten children living below the poverty line, according to a recent New Economics Foundation report. Haringey Council has also capped the number of local fast food outlets in response to high number of obesity-related deaths.