Irish Seed Savers Community Seed Guardian Programme

The need for food seed has grown significantly in recent years. Several threats to our food supply are now upon us – a growing awareness of climate change and its impact on food accessibility; the increased demand for food seed during the Covid-19 crisis; and the threat from Brexit’s limitations on imports of food and food seed coming from and through the United Kingdom. As more people want to control their food supply there is a greater interest to grow and access food locally, rather than continual reliance on imported food and food seed.

Bringing 30 years of conservation experience with food seed and fruit trees, Irish Seed Savers Association have created the Community Seed Guardian Programme – a training programme for communities across Ireland to grow and save their own seed to create greater community engagement with the full food supply, from seed to plate. Funded through Rethink Ireland’s Innovate Together programme, which was established in response to Covid-19 to build resilience in communities, the goal of this training initiative is to engage community gardens with the value of growing and saving seed to become a natural part of each community gardens’ growing season and reduce reliance on imported food seed and food supply.

About This Programme
The Community Seed Guardians training programme is open to established community gardens based all around Ireland. Ten community gardens will be selected and provided with free seed saving training by Irish Seed Savers experienced facilitators, learning the steps to saving seeds successfully in their community garden. This community programme is open to community gardening groups, who have experience growing food and have access to land. This is a 2-year programme and will require commitment of 6 days training for up to 3 members of each community group, and an additional 2 days for the full group.
The representatives will receive six full days of free training in total throughout 2021. These days are a combination of workshops specifically for the representatives that will take place at the Irish Seed Savers farm and the advisory workshops will take place at each community garden – these advisory workshops are open to attend by all members of each community gardening group and includes a seed saving workshop for the full group.

The total value of this training to each group will be over €1,000 as well as mentoring, seeds, and ongoing support.

This is a 2-year programme and will require commitment from two experienced representative gardeners from each community garden. The representatives will receive six full days of free training in total throughout 2021. These days are a combination of workshops specifically for the representatives that will take place at the Irish Seed Savers farm and the advisory workshops will take place at each community garden – these advisory workshops are open to attend by all members of each community gardening group and includes a seed saving workshop for the full group.

How to Apply
Please complete the Application Form at the link below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/communityseedguardians
Deadline for applications is 18th January 2021.