Sudbury Shared Harvest was the recent recipient of $57,000 in funding to support the group’s efforts at regenerative planting that also links seniors and youth.
This week, Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré and Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe were in Coniston to announce the funding, which was supported jointly by the federal government through FedNor and the New Horizons for Seniors program.
At the same time, they spotlighted a couple of New Horizons mini-projects in Coniston: an edible forest garden housed at the Coniston Community Garden and two pollinator gardens at that community’s French and English elementary schools.
Jessica Blaauw, the board chair of Sudbury Shared Harvest, explained the initiative is part of the group’s I-GROW initiative. I-GROW stands for International Gardens Regenerating Our World.
“Seniors and youth have been working together to plan I-GROW, or the Intergenerational Gardens Regenerating Our World project since early spring,” Blaauw said in a news release. “Regenerative agriculture is more important now than ever and it’s so great to bring people together to get their hands dirty.”
In Coniston, Shared Harvest and volunteers expanded an area of fruit trees and other edible, perennial plants by adding cherry, gooseberry, currant, haskap and strawberries, as wella as herbs and other ground-cover plants.
Volunteer Suzanne Dubien also worked with classes at St. Paul the Apostle school and École Notre Dame de la Merci to organize the planting of pollinator gardens at the two Coniston schools before school ended in June.
The I-GROW program has also resulted in garden beds being built at several daycare centres, another edible forest garden planted at the Louis Street housing complex, and a series of free workshops to be offered later this summer and fall.
Of the $57,000 in funding announced, the New Horizons for Seniors Program contributed $22,000 to support the I-GROW project.
“The New Horizons for Seniors grant is providing such wonderful opportunities for seniors to take the lead, working together with volunteers of all ages on a number of urban agriculture initiatives,” said Carrie Regenstreif, executive director of Sudbury Shared Harvest. “The project isn’t just about producing food, but also about learning how to do that while improving the environment as a whole.”
The remaining $35,000 was funded by FedNor to allow Sudbury Shared Harvest to hire a youth intern on a one-year basis. The intern will “work with other youth involved in the agri-food sector to undertake research, development, and marketing of products and/or services, as well as develop a business plan to create a social enterprise and support the long term economic sustainability of the Youth Employment in Agriculture (YEA) program launched by Sudbury Shared Harvest in 2019,” the press release states.
