It's been an intense year at Idaraya Life CIC and we had fun engaging with the community and building connections. This webpage shares what we achieved for the project from February 2022 - June 2023.
Project Summary
The project was developed to provide a space for our local community to understand and see how they could take action to positively affect Climate Change.
Our focus lay in promoting community action and fostering intergenerational links by engaging individuals in outdoor activities and looking at ways they coudl live more sustainably.
We took a dynamic approach of hosting some walks, having gathering spaces for us to speak on climate change, develop an outdoor growing space and teaching skills for people to repair items rather than dispose of them.
‘Together for Our Planet’ Fund
Building on interest and excitement for COP26,
Together for Our Planet was looking to fund proposals for community-led climate action projects.
Idaraya Life CIC focused on the following criteria:
We are passionate about empowering women to embrace the outdoors and connect with nature through walking. Our focus for this project was to encourage women to exploring the beauty of local woodlands, providing a safe and inclusive environment for women to come together, connect, and rejuvenate as well as understand our impact on the world and how we could better engage with it.
We embarked on exciting journeys, breathing in the fresh air, and discovering the wonders that our natural surroundings had to offer.
With the grow part of the project we focued on setting up and maintaing our community growing space. With the focus on it being an accesible hub for gathering, learning and connecting with nature. With a vibrant herb garden and a focus on seasonal food, we aim to inspire healthy eating habits while also reducing food waste. We are working to encourage women, especially those with children by fostering a love for fresh home grown vegetables and fruits.
Some Highlights from the what happened on the project
We had a variety of walking sessions with the most popular and most educating being the walk to the
Cadishead & Little Woolden Moss Mossland in Manchester. We have learnt about the delicate balance of nature and how it is possible to recover damaged land for our future.
Largely through collaborating with local community groups, we provided crafts skills workshops.
Teaching community members how to make items for the home and fashion from recovered or repurposed fabric.
The hardest, messiest and most enjoyable part of our project has been the growing section.
We acquired a large raised bed within our local community garden at Alexandra Park in Wigan.
Learning to work with seasons and how challenging it can be to grow food in a changing climate has been very teaching to the community.
How we are progressing from this project
Our Comunity growing space will continue to be used for learning about differnet plants and as it situated in a public space, cummunity memebers are free to harvest and engage on their own schedule.
We have been working more closely with local comunity organisation - Fur Clemt. As an organisation that is actively tackling food waste, we are acting on the feedback received from the community for cooking classes that are not only health and positive for the climate but that are budget friendly too.
The cost of living crisis means that time and money are more squeezed for our community members than usual and so providing wellbeing activities that are accesible and consistent is vital. They want to get outside and want the encouragement.
As more people try to ensure that their owned items last longer, we will continue to offer craft workshop that serve 2 purposes:
Because nothing is perfect.
We share these to hopefully inform our future projects and share learning with others.
The project was unknowingly ambitious as at the time of applying for funding the necessary practitioners and resources were avaiable. Once the project started, personal challenges such as illness and domestic problems directly affected the progress of the project as there were limited contingencies.
The dynamic nature, although appropriately challenging, well intentioned and apparently necessary was far out of my comfort zone and once plans, changed a domino effect of failures ensued.
It important to have frank and honest evluatioin of ones capacity when planning project as should this fall by the wayside, it's a shame for so much to be lost.
Once the project was begun and the plans for a growing space were twarted - due to external decision makers - the growing season had been missed to certain extent and so there was very limited opportunity to change initial intentions. Having alternative delivery methods is vital for a project just in case the initial plan has to change.
Not having enough skills within the organisation meant that even when their were good opportunities to collaborate or progress the project, capacity to engage with the projects was limited. This siloed style of working has not been beneficial to the community or Idaraya Life.
The lack of robust processes on this project alongside the many others that were funded for Idaraya Life CIC in the last between 2022 - 2023 made for inconsistent management, miscommunication and professional falling out. This led to a delay in reporting and limited the accountability and transparency that could be provided as I was doing far more of the work that was suitable and practical.
Compounded by me taking time out from working due to mental ill health meant that work coudl not go on without me as I had the bulk of authority, responsibility and accountability for our project delivery.
Not promptly communicating with the funder when the plans for the project started to change and it became more difficult to realise our initial project outline was the biggest mistake of all. Siloed thinking and taking on all the work to sort something out when you have a Funding Officer to support you is silly at best and damaging at worst. I personally developed a fear of applying for any funding as my anxiety related to project delivery worsened as my health declined. I will not make that mistake again.
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Idaraya Life CIC is a Registered Community Interest Company (12931807)
All the money received from grants, sales and earnings are all used to continue supporting women in the community and is not for private gain.
