Our Community

Our community is not just a group of people joint with a shared vision to grow veggies, although that is one of our activities. Foremost we are growing a model community engagement process made up of communities via identifying and addressing the omnipresent issue of food security and sustainable development.

Broadly, ‘Community’ refers to a group of people who share a common identity or a special interest. ‘Community participation’ can be defined as a process of active involvement of local individuals and groups in assessment of needs, planning solutions, creating structures for and implementing solutions and assessing outcomes. We therefore define communities as being located in a particular shared place, and consisting of networks of networks. A community of place is more complex than a single network, it has members with multiple identities, roles and aspirations, who belong to a number of networks within their own communities and others. Sustainable development at the community level utilises the capacity that already lies in a community, that being made up of the natural, cultural and human capital.

Natural capital includes environmental health (e.g. soil conservation) and landscape diversity, and promotes sustainable land productivity. Cultural capital is a human construction that includes perceptions and knowledge systems, and affects the definition of problems. Human capital is driven by demographic trends, and the skills and capacity of the population. Natural, cultural and human capitals make up the “base” of the community in terms of resolving environmental issues. For a community to develop in a sustainable way these forms of capital are transformed into high levels of social, built and financial capital.

We have solid plans, but alas when or where we end is open, we have agreed to a process of transparency and communication and all are welcome to board.