GIY Neighbourhoods

Our mission is to cultivate sustainable, food-growing communities through a place-based program that connects homes, schools, workplaces, and local spaces. By inspiring “food empathy,” we empower individuals and communities to grow their own food—nurturing pro-environmental habits, reducing food waste, and supporting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.

GIY Neighbourhoods

Our mission is to cultivate sustainable, food-growing communities through a place-based program that connects homes, schools, workplaces, and local spaces. By inspiring “food empathy,” we empower individuals and communities to grow their own food—nurturing pro-environmental habits, reducing food waste, and supporting healthier, more sustainable lifestyles.

By growing together, we can change behaviours, teach life skills, and deliver outcomes of health, connectedness and environmental agency. Growing also plays an important role in supporting social cohesion in our cities, towns, villages and districts, as 42% of people report increased feeling of increasing social capital by bringing people together. Together, we can lighten our footprint on the planet, and sow the seeds of a deeper understanding of where healthy, sustainable food comes from.

HOW IT WORKS:

GIY Neighbourhoods is a place-based program designed to educate, empower, inspire, and connect households, communities, schools, and workplaces through food-growing as a meaningful climate action. GIY work with partner organisations to fund & deliver a targeted food growing & sustainability programme to residents, families, school children and groups within a city, neighbourhood or region.

GIY Neighbourhoods aims to grow the knowledge and capacity for food growing within participating neighbourhoods – strengthening the connection with our food system, food suppliers and producers, and food sharing initiatives:

 

🏠Home Growing: Households receive free growing kits that include seeds and instructions to start growing their own food, with an emphasis on sharing seeds and knowledge within their community.​

🏫School Growing: Schools engage in garden-based learning through raised beds, growing kits, and lesson plans that incorporate sustainability and food literacy into the curriculum. Students learn to grow their own food, connecting them to the origins of food and the environment.​

🏢Workplace Engagement: Employees are invited to participate in food-growing activities, sometimes involving ‘grow-at-work’ programmes, fostering a sustainable culture among co-workers.​

💚Community Growing: Community spaces are activated with food-growing projects such as community gardens, allotments, and shared green spaces.

 

Contact us to discuss how we can partner to deliver GIY Neighbourhoods in your region, and see how we can work together to change behaviours, teach life skills, and deliver outcomes of health, connectedness and environmental agency.

"Growing can be a very solitary activity. But GIY helped us to build a community of growers who share seeds, plants, advice and produce.
I have met people in my community with a shared interest who I never knew before!" 
— Gareth Kelly | Inniskeen, Co Monaghan

2023 Case Study

Through a collaboration launched in 2023, GIY delivered food growing programmes to schools, households and communities across 8 Healthy Community areas under the Sláintecare Healthy Communities initiative. Over 50 schools took part in GIY’s GROW at School programme, and over 1,000 homes growing and sharing through GROW it Forward.

These programmes span from Donegal to Dublin, taking place in Waterford, Kildare and Longford. We are delighted to work with the County Councils, local development officers and Healthy Communities officers in these regions to support residents to learn the skill of food growing, and to adopt healthy, sustainable behaviours in line with the Sláintecare Healthy Communities programme objective.

Programme Impact & Outcomes

  • Cultivating the lifelong skill of food growing amongst all sectors of a community.
  • Empowering neighbourhoods to create their own source of healthy, nutritious, organic food supply. (Think of the impact on food miles globally!)
  • Teaching children where their food comes from – which in turn increases the likelihood of them eating fresh fruit and vegetables. Bonus!
  • Social connection through food growing – 42% of people report increased feeling of social connection & capacity through food growing.
  • Environmental agency; families & individuals learning about the importance of a healthy, sustainable food system.

Partners