From idea to impact: What ‘Make it Grow’ has achieved with community partners in Zimbabwe

Make it Grow’s recently published impact report (September 2026) shows how a participatory methodology has helped fourteen Zimbabwean community groups turn their ideas into food system enterprises and has reshaped how organisations across the country think about who gets to apply for start-up funding - and how. Getting funding for a good idea usually means writing a proposal. But what happens when the people with the best ideas for solving food insecurity in their own communities have never been taught to write a proposal and don't have to, because they can show you instead? 

That's the question at the heart of Make it Grow, a knowledge-exchange and capacity-building initiative led by Dr Pamela Richardson at the University of Sheffield's Institute for Sustainable Food. Since 2020, the project has worked with community-based organisations across rural and peri-urban Zimbabwe and elsewhere, replacing the conventional written grant proposal with something far more accessible and engaging - short videos, filmed on mobile phones, created by the communities themselves. The teams Impact Report, which draws on participatory video reports, interviews, and participatory diagrams from 14+ funded community groups, sets out the changes that occurred and how these community groups were impacted as a result. 

In 2024, fourteen community groups across Zimbabwe used this participatory video approach to secure small grants and begin work on a wide range of locally-designed food system projects, including poultry and goat rearing, greenhouse vegetable production, fish farming, indigenous seed saving, and food processing enterprises making everything from baobab products to porridge. 

Each community group co-designed their project to fit their own needs, skillsets and aspirations. Rather than following a single template for success, the report identifies five distinct pathways through which these projects have created change over the past two years. Some groups built production systems from the ground up, turning small-scale starts into steady seasonal income, while others added value and developed enterprises, earning more from what they already produced. Many generated new knowledge and skills through hands-on learning that went well beyond the individuals directly trained. And several adapted and built resilience in the face of shocks such as droughts and cyclones, keeping their projects running through real setbacks.

One of the report's central findings is that impact rarely moved in a straight line. As the report puts it, impact is not something singular or static, but dynamic, unfolding changes generated through interconnected and interacting processes. Impact reaches beyond the projects themselves as they generate multidimensional outcomes, integrate learning and inspire new initiatives.

Alongside these pathways, the report identifies six areas where the projects have made a lasting difference in the lives of community members: 

• Food security and nutrition improved as groups diversified what they grew and extended production across the year. 
• Income and livelihoods became more stable, particularly for groups that moved into processing and enterprise.
• Participants gained real technical, organisational, and communication skills - many for the first time. 
• Projects strengthened community participation and social bonds, often across generations. 
• Women took on growing leadership roles, particularly in enterprises they led directly. 
• Groups built environmental sustainability and climate resilience into their practice, often by drawing on indigenous knowledge and reducing dependence on external inputs.

None of these sit in isolation - a stronger group made it easier to learn, new skills made it easier to earn, and each outcome reinforced the others. 

This process is an important part of how Make it Grow works. The programme goes beyond the initial video proposal training by providing ongoing project planning skills workshops, creating opportunities for facilitators to share knowledge, and supporting learning circles where projects can learn from one another. Groups are also encouraged to report back on their initiatives and share their experiences with others. These meetings gave facilitators an opportunity to reconnect, reflect on their experiences, and share updates about their community projects. Facilitators spoke about the value of building wider networks and developing a deeper understanding of how storytelling can support their work. This continued exchange of knowledge and experience is an important part of building longer-term resilience in food systems. Rather than supporting a single food project and leaving communities once the funding ends, Make it Grow aims to build skills, relationships and networks that communities can continue to independently utilise and develop over time.

Several organisations that have worked with Make it Grow have started to use the approach in their own community engagement work. This has changed how they work with marginalised communities, made project management more inclusive, and improved access to start up funding for the groups they support. It's a challenge to funders and evaluators more broadly to think differently about what success looks like in the early stages of community-led work, and to build project planning and monitoring approaches that can see adaptation and learning as evidence of progress, not as a deviation from it.

Make it Grow is led by Dr Pamela Richardson at the University of Sheffield's Institute for Sustainable Food. 

Funding associated with this work: UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, Impact Accelerator Award 2024, EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship 2021-26, The University of Sheffield, Faculty of Social Science: Impact Evidencing Grant (2025) & Impact Internship Fund (2026).