Community Food Initiative

Overview

The purpose of this funding is to establish a Demonstration Programme of Community Food Initiatives (CFIs) on the island of Ireland. CFIs are projects that improve the availability and accessibility of healthy food for low-income groups at a local level, using a community development approach.

This funding is open to community groups or groups which have an anti-poverty focus in their work. They would especially welcome applications from partnerships/collaborations of different groups. As the programme has an all-island focus, a minimum of two projects will be selected from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The programme will be targeted towards Community Food Initiatives, activities which will be funded include:

• Buying equipment for a kitchen, e.g. pots and pans or garden e.g. gardening tools/seeds
• Renting space to carry out training and education initiatives
• Establishing and supporting food access initiatives such as community cafés and local food co-ops
• Education, training in skills development programmes e.g. cooking, shopping, parenting and budgeting.
• Seed funding to establish a food market with support from local authority and other partners)
• Buying the time of a professional, e.g. part-time nutrition expert to work with groups and give classes advising on food purchasing, preparation and safe cooking practices and/or horticulturist to work with groups on community garden projects
• Supporting groups to develop food related micro businesses e.g. fruit tuck shops in school/food co-ops
• Community Supported Agriculture projects which help develop sustainable local food economies through supporting local networks

Each CFI will receive annual funding over a period of three years to set up, manage and sustain a project. Funding will be up to a maximum of €75,000 (£70,000) provided on an incremental basis over the three year period. The seven recipients of the Community Food Initiative (CFI) funding are:

• East Belfast Healthy Eating Education Programme (Belfast)
• Food Focus Community Food Initiative (Cork)
• Food for Life (Derry)
• Footprints Women’s Centre Building a Transition Community (Belfast)
• KASI Community Garden (Killarney)
• Limerick Seed to Plate Project (Limerick)
• The Food Garden Project (Dundalk)

How to Apply

Full guidelines and application forms are available from the website.