Supporting community-based food projects: advisory & training services on participatory video proposals for planning, sharing and fundraising purposes
Make It Grow is a UoS CROSS Catalyst award winner, affiliated to the Institute for Sustainable Food, University of Sheffield, supported by the UKRI's Economic and Social Research Council.
We devise resources to support straightforward ways of enhancing the social inclusion, production and dissemination of video proposals for community groups and facilitators.
We provide tools and facilitate online spaces to enable individuals, groups and organisations to build their video-making capacities, particularly for the purpose of creating community-based, participatory video proposals.
We work with INGOS, community groups and networks, like the United Nations Development
Programme's Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme and other donors, to support and pilot the integration of video proposals into their grant management and application
process.
Through our social media channels, we provide support for the community partners that we work with by promoting their videos. Public events and video screenings are organised to support the fundraising efforts and raise awareness about sustainable food issues.
The Make it Grow project was borne from a need to support grassroots community organisations to use video to effectively share their stories and pitch their project ideas. The workshop is designed to support participants in using video more effectively, as a powerful tool to communicate, to learn, to document and gain support for community-based food projects. Our learning programme is practical and highly interactive, aiming to create an online space for mutual support and knowledge exchange between participating individuals, communities or organisations.
The Vision Africa Community Working Group are raising funds for their Horticulture and Chicken Breeding Project to tackle unemployment, a lack of economic empowerment, and poverty.
The Hama Maoko Star Club is raising funds for their youth-driven rabbit production project which will improve food and nutrition security in the Shurugwi community.
Fambidzanai Permaculture Training Centre, Zimbabwe, in partnership with Gosha Organic Farmers Group is raising funds for their gardening for improved sustainable livelihoods project.
The 33 women-strong Sisonke Broiler Cluster is raising funds for their broiler rearing project, with the hope to improve their own and the community's livelihood, as well as food and nutritional security.