Dumfries & Galloway
Community Food Network
Connecting and supporting community food projects across the region
What is a Community Food Project?
Community food projects or initiatives have working with their local community as their primary focus.
They include community food growing and gardening, emergency food provision, food sharing, community meals, surplus food redistribution, community cafes, food education, healthy cooking and nutrition and more...
Community food projects are often run by small groups of dedicated people working at grassroots level, many of whom are volunteers.
Community food projects are at the forefront of providing food to those who need it, creating sustainable, ethical local food systems and building connected, just and caring communities.
Why have a network?
Research so far via our Community Food survey and local food gatherings shows that people involved in these projects would like to
- share skills, knowledge and resources
- access peer support
- share good practice and avoid duplication
- promote community food projects and attract more interest, involvement and funding
- have a collective voice to influence policy and practice at local and national level
What does the network offer?
As the network develops we will add or change what we offer in response to our members needs. At the moment we have
- Community Food Forum Email Group for sharing news, opportunities, action and inspiration and staying in touch with Network events and activities
- Community Food Network Facebook Page
- Meet-ups and gatherings online and in person for networking, support and celebration
- Point of contact for organisations and individuals looking for information on community food projects, and to showcase projects
- Representation - giving community food projects a voice at local and national partnership meetings
- Facilitation - identifying training needs and skill sharing opportunities, and helping to making them happen
- Ongoing support/advice - including helping your project to get funding, connect with other people doing similar work, and more.
Community Composting Pilots in D&G – Exciting Times!
Conversations during our Local Food Gatherings at the end of 2024 highlighted the need for reducing waste and given that in Scotland we throw away over 600,000 tonnes of household food waste we couldn’t agree more!
So in response, we are supporting 3 pilot
Community Composting Projects to get established in
Moniaive, Whithorn and Gatehouse of Fleet in partnership with
DG Climate Hub/Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere who have funded
DG Community Food Network to co-ordinate this first phase.
Third Sector Dumfries and Galloway CLLD fund has awarded the money to buy the contained composting units for the pilot sites so they will soon be up and running.
Community composting turns local food scraps and other waste into a
valuable resource, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills
while
cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. It helps build
healthier soil for community gardens and green spaces, supports
local food production, and strengthens
community resilience.
These test sites will help to create a model that other communities across the region can roll out themselves. If your community is interested in a composting scheme please get in touch as we would really like to support more sites in the future if further funding can be secured.
There will be regular updates on our Facebook pages:
https://www.facebook.com/DGCommunityFood
Find out more on the Propagate website :
Grow Cook Eat
Over the spring month’s we have been running Grow Cook Eat courses in Lockerbie and Moffat for DG Community Food Network. These sessions were designed to give people the skills and knowledge to cook fresh nutritious meals on a budget, how to grow some of the ingredients they were cooking and have the chance to socialise over a meal each week.
Through partnership working the courses were supported by volunteers from Lockerbie Old School and Health Improvement Team NHS. In Moffat the Upper Annan Church donated the use of their kitchen and garden. Thanks to DG Council Area Committee Fund - Annandale & Eskdale Tackling Poverty - we were able to offer these courses for FREE!
Grow Cook Eat was a great success and met its original outcomes as well as lots of unexpected ones such as people meeting up outside of the course to batch cook together, recipe and seed sharing and making connection with other organisations who are now part of the DG Community Food Network.
You can read the full evaluation here:
With thanks to our Funders:
