Back2Earth

Local community regeneration

Children with spades The Community Kitchen Bread making Working on community gardens Preparing the kitchen garden Ruth's pruning workshop At the Great British Menu Banquet

The People's Millions Programme
















Harmony Gardens French Drains

Last year we applied for the BIG Lottery's People's Millions to create and build the Broadwater's Harmony Gardens around the Community Centre, as an additional productive and educational leisure facility for local people. We managed to win the vote on the night, with more than twice as many votes as our rival project in West London. We achieved the support of nearly 5000 votes from mostly local people and would probably have had many more if the cost of premium rate calls to record votes had not been so high for people in such a poor area.

We started work on this Project in the grounds of the Broadwater Farm Community Centre the week beginning February 28th 2011 with all garden construction and preparation works being done as volunteering and training schemes involving as many local people and schools as possible.

With our professional Tutors and Session leaders we devised Volunteering and Training schemes for our volunteers and trainees to be engaged in, creating and developing the Broadwater's Harmony Gardens while also learning vocational and basic skills. We are also an accredited ASDAN Centre now, offering training and accreditation in employability, environmental conservation and volunteering for those of our volunteers who want it.

We have just finished our first six week pilot training course on the Broadwaters Harmony Gardens Project and it has been a real boost to our work here. This first course was a steep learning curve but ultimately a great success with more and more local people joining every week. Our second Training Course as a fully accredited ASDAN Centre will be starting on the 3rd of May when we also hope to serve lunches everyday cooked by our local cooks from the estate as a first step to taking the Community Café full time.

This Broadwater Farm Harmony Gardens project will take us through until September 24th when we hope to open the new Harmony Gardens with our first celebratory Harvest Festival as there will be too much construction work in the Park to hold our annual Green Show and the Lordship Rec Festival this year.

Areas of Business

Summary

Back To Earth Projects began life in 2004 and they still run successfully at Hackney City Farm, as a programme of environmental volunteering and green skills training projects, mainly for marginalised and disadvantaged people.


Back2Earth Projects in Tottenham, is now established as a local community regeneration and environmental charity that aims to transform people's lives in this diverse, deprived area by enabling them to engage with - and make productive use of their immediate environment. This B2E Programme of local community food projects is the first venture to actively involve local people in local regeneration, making use of the land in and around Lordship Recreation Ground in Haringey.

Based at Broadwater Farm Community Centre, Back2Earth, currently runs a pilot programme of practical, local food, health and green skills training projects designed to promote: local community cohesion; improving people's long term health, their lifestyles and living standards; their employability and their local environment.

The first pilot projects: the Community Kitchen, the Community Gardens and the Food Co-op encourage people from the many different local communities to come together around their food; to grow and produce their own food, and use their favourite recipes to focus on preparing healthy, affordable fresh meals that use sustainable, seasonal, locally grown fruit and veg. where possible.

The need for this project and the changes it will bring grows increasingly urgent, as deprivation and disadvantage in this area seriously affects health and quality of life. The Marmot Report: "Fair Society, Healthy Lives", published Feb. 2010, states: " health inequality in the UK is now so pronounced that in the wealthiest areas of London a man will have an average life expectancy of 88 years -whereas in somewhere like Tottenham it is only 71 years." - a difference of 17 years. Just locally people in Muswell Hill in West Haringey live an average of more than 8 years longer than they do in Tottenham.