Gorgie City Farm has received £5,000 to help run its community gardening project. The funding is from Corra Foundation and will be used towards the salaries of the staff running the project.
Tracy Cudworth, Community Gardening Project Manager, said: “We have up to 60 adults from all over Edinburgh involved in this gardening project, most of whom are disabled or disadvantaged. Over the 45 weeks we work with them the difference we see is enormous. Many of the people will have never done any gardening before, so they learn lots of practical skills. This leads to obvious changes like people becoming more active and starting to eat more healthily, but it can be the less obvious benefits that make the biggest difference. Often people are feeling very isolated when they first come along, and spending time on the farm with lots of other people and having a real purpose to what they are doing is a fantastic way to increase people’s confidence and just get them engaging with other people again.”
One of the main aims of Gorgie City Farm is that it is accessible to everyone. It is open to the public seven days a week, and has a cafe, play park, education programme, farm animals and pets, and a range of different gardens. As well as the community gardening project, there are also projects for young people with behavioural problems and education projects.
Mary Craig OBE, Chief Executive of Corra Foundation, said: “Once people lose confidence to get out and meet people it can be very hard for them to get that back. This community gardening project is the perfect way to get people outside, which can be a very big step in itself, and having a focused activity that also increases the contact they have with other people at the same time as they learn new skills is a great combination. Our funding is going to help pay the salaries of the people who run this project, and it’s a great example of a charity needing to be able to cover their basic costs so they can deliver work that has immediate benefits but also a real long term impact on the lives of the people involved.”
