Free support to grow your own food and become a mentor

Cornwall’s Growing Food and Composting project will run a series of free workshops for would-be food growers in towns across Cornwall starting in April. 

The workshops will be open to local people who want to try out growing their own food and composting for the first time. The free workshops will be run over a three week period, with two workshops on growing your own food and one on composting. The course has proved a popular with new growers in the past, so people are advised to book early as spaces will be limited.

The Growing Food and Composting project has been working with communities in Cornwall for over three years and has supported over six hundred people to develop gardening and composting skills, through training and additional support. The project is now looking at recruiting twelve people from throughout Cornwall, who will be mentored to become active volunteers in their community promoting food growing and composting activities.

Claire Brown, Environment and Health Manager for Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change (CN4C) said: “So many people have been inspired to start growing and composting through this project and share their skills with friends and family.  This is a fantastic opportunity for people to have access to free training and support that can make a difference to achieving a successful harvest.”

“The work of a volunteer mentor can be varied, it could be committing to sharing your growing or composting skills with friends or neighbours or running a few gardening workshops in your community.  It also doesn’t have to be too demanding, as it could just involve regularly sharing your advice through the projects own facebook page ‘Growing Food and Composting’. We are also going to be producing a thrifty growing guide that needs hints and tips from existing growers on how to save money, so we’d love to hear from anyone with great ideas.”

Joan Gaynor an existing project beneficiary says “Over the last couple of years I have mentored ten people to become active home composters and I have found the work very rewarding, whilst it is also good to share knowledge with friends, family and neighbours, and encourage them to do likewise, as some of the people I mentored, have now supported other’s to start composting.”