Land-based community food organisations - Sustain / CGA members & supporters meet-up

Want to learn how to successfully raise funds / revenue for your existing or upcoming community gardens or other urban agriculture project?  In this webinar you'll discover the tips & tricks to economic stability for your food production not-for-profit, community garden, or social enterprise.

Our first members' meet up held on 29th April was a great success. We had people joining from all over the country, from different organisations and backgrounds, to hear from Churchill Fellow Clytie Binder about the work her and her team do, plus the launch of LOCCAL - the LOcal Community Compost Alliance (Australia). 

Attending were reps from Permaculture Sydney South, Pakenham Community Garden, Garfield Community Garden, Bellingen Community Garden, Naarm City Compost Network, Heywood Community Garden, Mandurah Community Garden, Byron Bay Public School Garden, the Community Plate initiative, Australian National University and Ediblescapes Project, amongst others. Folks representing Vic, ACT, NSW, QLD and WA - a great spread across the country. 

Ideas for future sessions included: 

• fundraising for community gardens
• preserving / creating green spaces in new developments
  
• conversations with social enterprises to develop income-generating projects
• security issues at community gardens
• finding, training, and retaining volunteers

As we discussed in detail in our 2022 mapping and needs assessment report on urban agriculture, (commercial and non-commercial), in Victoria - Growing Edible Cities and Towns, funding and revenue-raising for community gardens and other urban agriculture projects plus organisations is such a critical challenge. It was one of our six key pillars of our Roadmap for Transformation:

So in our second members' meet up for 2024 we'll be focusing on this crucial topic. 

Nick Rose, Sustain's Executive Director has extensive experience in fundraising and revenue generation (Sustain has raised sufficient funds to employ over 30 people since 2016). Nick will share some of his insights - and we'll have at least one guest presenter from another land-based community food organisation or social enterprise (TBC). 

In the second part of the meet-up, Nick and CGA National Coordinator Naomi Lacey, will share key updates from each organisation in an open discussion. 

This event is free for members of Sustain and CGA! If you are not a member you can join Sustain here and CGA here.

This is the second series of joint members & supporters meet-ups we'll be organising this year - so help us grow this movement and become a member!   

SPECIAL NOTICE

Sustain is currently running a crowd-funding campaign to support the recovery of food production capacity in the Gaza strip, which has, (and continues to be), devastated by the ongoing genocidal violence being waged against the people of Gaza by Israel. We have been asked to run this campaign by the leadership of the Gaza Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Platform, with whom we worked to raise $25,000 to support members of the Gazan Urban Women Agripreneurs Forum in 2021 after the May 2021 Israeli bombing campaign. 

For more info, plus contribute to our efforts to help the small-scale women producers of Gaza recover and rebuild their enterprises, to work towards food sovereignty in Gaza, please visit the campaign page on our website.