Project Type: Food

Unidos Social Innovation Centre was created in 2018 by a group of refugees living in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. This settlement is home to around 120,000 refugees from neighbouring countries and cultures, such as Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Of these 120,000 people, around 14,200 are farmers.

Unidos Social Innovation Centre assembled together to help create livelihood-opportunities and food security in the community, after food rations were drastically reduced for refugees in Uganda.

The organisation seeks to create solutions to some of the big challenges people face: poverty, climate change, war, and political suppression from home countries. All activities are based on inclusive education and empowerment through entrepreneurial skills.

The centre teaches different courses, such as:

• Ecological farming techniques
• English
• Business and leadership
• Female empowerment

While practising permaculture in various external locations, the organisation constructed its own education centre, in 2021.

It has since supported nearly 700 people from Somalia, Congo and Burundi to successfully graduate as farmers in ecological farming.

The organisation is now interested to regenerate the soil through education and demonstrating to thousands of people how to do vermicomposting and its utility to grow more food through being a solution to the infertile soil in Nakivale refugee camp. It also sees the potential of commercially sized worm composting systems, and has constructed one such system near its education Centre in Nakivale

Habiba Community is a bottom-up initiative based on the shores of Sinai, Egypt. It joined the Ecosystem Restoration Camps (ERC) movement in 2019 and is now one of many organisations in this movement encouraging regenerative sustainable development models in South Sinai.

Ultimately Habiba seeks to make the Sinai desert green again. Habiba’s efforts to restore the South Sinai region are matched with international efforts underway to restore the entire Peninsula, which thousands of years ago used to be a forest-covered region rich in life and biodiversity. This development model has changed the mindset, by building inclusion, creating a network of 75 farms, 48 of which are Bedouin owned, that have fair access to the local market, and providing equal opportunities for all to guarantee well-being.

Habiba combines education and work in permaculture and restoration of the natural system with the goal of cooperating with the local Bedouin community. Embracing the ERC goal of providing educational programs in environmental restoration and regenerative practices for personal health and well-being.

Habiba helped local communities to:

• Introduce regenerative agricultural techniques
• Stop erosion
• Avoid further desertification
• Rebuild local livelihoods, based on healthy ecosystems

Habiba’s key asset is a regenerative and organic farm in the desert. This adapts cutting-edge methods in sustainable agri-tech and experimentation. This farm is changing the way food is produced, and is an international knowledge hub where community collaboration takes place.

Habiba is now working towards building a climate change resilient community in the coastal town of Nuweiba.

Groundswell International was founded in 2009 by representatives all over the world, who came together to create a partnership that draws on decades of collaboration and experience of developing effective approaches for strengthening community-led social change in Africa, the Americas and Asia.

As stated in Groundswell’s book ‘Fertile Ground: Scaling AE [Agroecology] from the Ground Up’, “There are about 2.5 billion people in the world, on 500 million farms, involved with smallholder family agriculture and food production. Their creative capacity to farm productively and sustainable with nature, instead of against it, is perhaps the most powerful force that can be unleashed to overcome the interlinking challenges of hunger, poverty, climate change, and environmental degradation.”

Groundswell joined forces around the mission of strengthening communities to build healthy farming and food systems from the ground up, while contributing to the growing global agroecology and food sovereignty movement.

It strengthens the capacity and effectiveness of local partner organisations, which in turn empower communities, farmers, and indigenous organisations to lead social change. It does this via various means, including:

• Collaborative design processes for programmes
• Facilitation of reciprocal learning between partners and allies
• Support for technical and methodological training

In 2021 Groundswell provided $1,541,000 to partner organisations, contributing to a total of over $13,727,000 distributed to partner programs since 2009.

Its work not only regenerates land impacted by climate change, but also creates economic benefits for those involved, improves health and nutrition, and reduces incentives for migration with a focus on gender equity.

Bioregional Weaving Lab Waterford takes a place-based approach to connecting fragmented initiatives into a collective impact approach for systemic change.

In doing this, it seeks to support long term transformation and regeneration. It aims to build a resilient food system that supports thriving landscapes, seascapes and communities. They do this by:

• Using networks and desktop research to reach out to stakeholders across the local food system. These range from farmers and teachers to decision makers in the Waterford region of Ireland. They meet them in their place, building trust, and also host multistakeholder workshops.
• Identifying the natural boundaries of the local bioregion by looking at maps of soil, watersheds and biotypes, walking the land and talking with the people.
• Sensing the need for systems change and applying tools and methodology for designing a strategy to push for holistic (natural, social, financial and inspirational) regeneration in rural and urban settings within the bioregion.

The bioregional weaving lab in Ireland started in 2019 and is hosted at the Grow It Yourself (GIY) office at GROW HQ cafe and regenerative garden in Waterford. GIY is a social enterprise that was established in 2008 to increase food empathy through school, community, business and media programmes. They have supported around 1 million participants to grow at least part of their own food.

The Irish bioregional weaving lab is part of an emerging European collective coordinated by Commonland, Ashoka and The Presencing Institute.

Community Interest Company Sol Haven (registered as SOL LAUG HAVENS C.I.C.) started in January 2018 in the UK, drawing on the founders’ shared passion for sustainable agriculture and personal experiences of homelessness.

Its vision is to create a blueprint for sustainable permaculture care hubs across the UK that are a showcase for rural arts and crafts while providing a sustainable local source of food.

More widely, the project seeks to explore, develop and create a practical environment that can be used to determine a better today and brighter tomorrow. By involving people who have very real needs today, it also encapsulates a genuine chance to change lives and build a community.

Sol Haven has regenerated disused farm buildings and gardens to create a social gathering space that hosts various groups and events that contribute to strengthening the local community.

The project’s ‘Ploughing the mind’ 12-week course has been carefully designed to help people struggling with their mental health to reconnect with community, themselves and make new friends.

Activities within the course include:

• Nature and horticultural therapy
• Mental health education
• Movement meditation
• Drumming
• Cooking.

A mixture of activities are combined to provide support, outlets for expression and the ability to learn new skills.

Following the completion of the programme Sol Haven seeks to support people in a wider programme, which will continue to help people overcome the barriers to both engaging socially with others and finding work.

Tejiendo Futuros ONG (Weaving Futures NGO) was founded in 2018 in the municipality of Panajachel, Guatemala.

It began in response to the deep needs of the local community. These challenges emerged because of structural violence, and the state having abandoned its people. This results in a lack of access to healthcare, education, decent housing, work and social inclusion. Panajachel is also a tourist destination, and this causes precarious work conditions for much of the population.

Tejiendo Futuros seeks to overcome these challenges and meet local needs by developing a comprehensive work model focused on four priority issues: holistic education, agroecology, psychosocial care, and health.

It currently:

• Works with over fifty families
• Provides education to nearly 100 children
• Provides comprehensive health care
• Develops agro-ecological production centres.

Its holistic school, ‘The Tree of Childhood’, provides free education and food to children and adolescents to promote optimal learning conditions.

Mothers and fathers receive psychosocial care through the ‘Strengthened Families’ programme. They work to eliminate negative behaviour patterns through workshops on self-esteem, new masculinities, responsible maternity/paternity and self-care.

The ‘Healthy Mind, Healthy Body’ program constantly monitors the physical and mental state of their members and provides quality care to ensure their good health.

The agroecological program, ‘KaUlew’ (Our Land in Cakchikel) promotes healthy lifestyles, responsible consumption, environmental awareness, entrepreneurship, and the rescue of ancestral productive practices.

Cooperativa Tonanzintlalli was founded by 23 indigenous Matagalpa women to cultivate and add value to organic regenerative coffee grown under the tree canopy, in right relationship with the land and the people in the community.

Through this project, the women are seeking to recover, promote, and defend their ecological and cultural indigenous knowledge, and their economic and political self-determination.

Tonanzintlalli means Sacred Mother Earth. The cooperative is committed to upholding the rights of our Mother Earth and our sacred relationship with her and all her creatures. Its coffee brand, Café D’Yasica, has received a few national integrity and quality awards. It is a symbol of the healing that is possible through agroforestry practices that protect and regenerate the forest and the waters and provide sustenance and income to its people, mitigating the need to turn to extractive activities.

The cooperative has also played an important role in the cohesion and health of the larger indigenous community. It has funded and led activities such as cultural development for the youth and primary health care services during covid-19.

Musu Runakuna is a Resguardo of the Inga people, made up of 43 families and 170 people. Their first ancestral territory dates back to the 19th century in the department of Cauca.

Then in 2001, due to the forced displacement and massacres caused by the armed conflict, they settled in the municipality of Mocoa – Putumayo, which belongs to the Colombian Amazon.

In 2017 it was affected by the avalanche that destroyed a large part of Mocoa and was the only indigenous community to lose territory, homes and productive agricultural projects; since then it has been in a process of ancestral reconstruction based on permaculture; the defence of Mother Earth; the implementation of ancestral knowledge; and political, social and economic regeneration. The latter is understood as a process and a consequence of “thinking beautifully” and acting consciously and respectfully.

In order to make this commitment a reality, it is in the process of setting up the first Ancestral Environmental and Entrepreneurial Village; Returning to the Inga Origin to recreate the millenary lifestyle of their ancestors. The Village will be developed in phases, starting with the territorial and entrepreneurial components associated with the design of the planning, use, interconnection and administration of the environmental and spiritual territory as well as the constitution of the Ancestral, Tourist and Gastronomic Indigenous Centre of Colombia, with representation of the 115 indigenous peoples of the national territory.

Welcome always to Musu Runakuna, a territory where the ancestral word favours the revitalisation of the spirit and good living (vivir bien).

Tuq’tuquilal was born in 2019 as a dream created by the founder and a local family, located in Lanquín, a warm subtropical rainforest territory guarded by the Q’eqchi Mayan people of Guatemala.

This dream was co-created to form a holistic project that works to regenerate the land through artisanal production of cacao and other products, organic agriculture, and ecotourism.

For Tuq’tuquilal, to regenerate is to repair the social, economic, and natural fabric we are immersed in locally, while facilitating opportunities for conscious cultural interchange and co-education. It focuses on repairing and innovating around:

• The economy and health of the cocoa producing families, by offering the possibility of selling their cocoa at an increasingly fair price, integrated with educational processes.
• The concept of identity and value that families have of their cocoa and culture through educational, organizational and identity processes.
• Ways of inhabiting a space, proposing ways of life that transform the ecological footprint of those who inhabit the space in Tuq’tuquilal.
• Agricultural alternatives based on permaculture applied to cocoa production plots and other productive systems.
• Forms of artisanal production with the objective of not polluting, creating efficient processes, celebrating cultural ingenuity, and generating employment for families.
• Social and economic fabric, seeking markets that integrate the valorization of family and field work, and fair and conscious trade in their work philosophy

The Mulokot Foundation, based in Suriname in South America, is a Wayana Indigenous led organisation.

Suriname has been home to the Wayana people for hundreds of years. There are only 865 Wayana Indigenous living in Suriname, worldwide there are just 2500 Wayana Indigenous left, and they see themselves as guardians of the forest. A formerly nomadic people, the Wayana only recently settled in three main villages in Suriname: Kawemhakan, Apetina and Palumeu. The Wayana territory in Suriname counts around 24 thousand square kilometeres and is one of the regions with the highest biodiversity in the world and has many endemic species, with new species still being discovered.

The foundation is working toward transitioning away from slash and burn farming methods of agriculture towards more sustainable options which will allow the lands to restore and regenerate.

In order to end the use of slash and burn farming (which involves destroying forest), the Mulokot Foundation will provide training and tools to local Wayana to support the use of composting to revive existing plots.

A thriving agricultural programme will also reduce the need to fly vegetables and food into the territory, currently necessary due its remoteness. It will also provide an alternative to fishing, which is needed due to the poisoning of rivers by gold mining in the region.