In October (2024), a symposium held as part of the Make it Grow project took place in Kufunda Village (Ruwa, Zimbabwe), bringing together participants from collaborating organisations (Kufunda Village, ORAP and PORET Trust) and partner communities for a full day of in-person activities.
Funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) award and led by Institute for Sustainable Food member, Dr Pamela Richardson, the Make it Grow project supports community-based sustainable food initiatives in Zimbabwe to build capacity and access start-up funds and small grants, through making video proposals. Through video-making and community capacity-building, marginalised communities can raise their voices and pitch their own ideas in their own words, supporting bottom-up community development.
Throughout this year, recurrent climate-induced shocks have caused devastating impacts in Zimbabwe. Crop failures, livestock deaths and water shortages have negatively affected livelihoods, especially in rural regions. According to the World Food Programme, approximately 6 million people in Zimbabwe are expected to be food insecure at the start of 2025. This means that almost 1/3 of the population will lack access to a sufficient amount of affordable and nutritious food. For this reason, community-led interventions are particularly important and play a vital role in improving food security.
The Make it Grow project has provided training for 12 local implementing organisations or non-profit organisations already working in the area of food security and community development. This ‘Training of Trainers’ Programme involved training in facilitation, video-making and project planning skills. Twenty staff members were trained and supported to facilitate their own workshops, on the ground, with their community group partners. As a result, video proposals were made by 14 community groups.
October’s symposium was facilitated by a team of local youth (supported/ trained by the Make it Grow team) and provided an opportunity for participants to network and collectively reflect on their learning from the workshops.
Dr Pamela Richardson gave a presentation about the background of the Make it Grow project, sharing the project aims and highlighting the successes and challenges to date.
The community groups presented their own community video proposals, showcasing a diverse range of innovative ideas for promoting change in their local food systems, and took part in a Q&A. Audience members shared feedback and drew from their own experiences to make helpful recommendations. The video proposals covered a wide range of locally-led food initiatives, including traditional food recipes, goat breeding, seed saving, urban farming, tree planting, amongst others.
Participants were encouraged to share key learnings from the Make it Grow training workshops in a World Café-style group activity. Among other things, they discussed the pros and cons of using participatory video in the context of community grant-making and had lively discussions and shared interesting reflections on: teamwork, confidence, determination, networking, creativity, ethics, planning and constructive criticism. This part of the event was invaluable, as it reinforced learning for the participants and enabled the facilitators to understand what the community groups valued most.
Dr Pamela Richardson from the University of Sheffield's School of Geography and Planning, said “It was a privilege to be part of this event, which brought people together from all over the country to share ideas about community food systems interventions. I am grateful for the funding, which allowed us to provide accommodation for the community group members and our local facilitators, for two nights. The time spent together was full of memorable moments and helped everyone to build solidarities and knowledge networks. We hope that donor organisations will pay attention to the valuable lessons we have learned around creating more inclusive and participatory grant-making processes.”
As the symposium came to a close, participants talked about ideas for next steps and described how taking part in the collaborative review process and engaging with each others’ projects made them feel.
The Make it Grow team will now be tracking the progress and impact of the 14 community food projects that have developed in this way, as a result of their training and outreach activities in 2024.
You can read more about the event here.