Deadline date looms for grants

GIY and Energia are calling on people across to the country to get growing their own food in 2018 and are offering all budding growers the opportunity to apply for funding from the ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’ €75,000 funding pool.

Grants from the Energia Get Ireland Growing Fund will be split across three categories ‘Sow’, ‘Grow’ and ‘Harvest’ with awards ranging from €500 to €2,000, plus one very special group will receive a massive €5,000 grant for their project. Together GIY and Energia will support at least 85 community food growing groups in 2018 and enable food growing by community and voluntary organisations all across Ireland including Northern Ireland. The application period is open from today until 19th January, 2018.

Head of Community Development at GIY Karen O’Donohoe says, that to date the ‘Get Ireland Growing’ initiative has to date supported almost 500 community food growing projects, positively impacting over 120,000 people. “We are delighted to say that so far €340,000 has been awarded to groups over the last five years and this was distributed to projects right across the country. There are just a few weeks left to apply for 2018 funding, so we are urging all groups and organisations to get their applications into us via giy.ie.”

The funding pool is open to any community group, school, NGO or Not for Profit, community garden or allotment group, GIY group, hospital, crèche, direct provision centre, men’s shed or any group. The projects should all have an element of outreach, promotion and inclusivity and should have some plan to encourage more people to grow their own food. The deadline for applications is January 19th, 2018 and applications can be made online via GIY.ie.