The Mini Farm Project | Growing Food for the Homeless

Stories

|August 9, 2017| 3mins

Timber Tots Child Care are extremely proud to support the team behind The Mini Farm Project. Since November 2016 Nick and his tireless team of volunteers have taken the vacant land adjacent to Timber Tots, to a site which will eventually produce 40 ‘no dig’ garden beds, a greenhouse and a compost making area. This Not For Profit Organisation creates garden ‘pods’ through a landshare program to grow food for the poor – everything from vegetables to herbs and even chicken eggs. MFP’s success is however completely reliant on its network of volunteers and community donations.

 

We spent some time with Nick and asked some questions about the vision for MFP and what future goals are for the organization. The Mini Farm Project passionately believe that all Australians deserve good quality and nutritious food. We work hard to create a place where people who fall through the cracks of our society have an opportunity to get back on their feet and live their lives in a full and meaningful way.

The Mini Farm Project is to provide relief of poverty, sickness, suffering, distress, misfortune, disability or helplessness of people, and to work proactively to enhance the physical and emotional wellbeing of people, in the communities of Australia without discrimination due to age, sex, race, ethnic background, religion, political beliefs or marital status through the following (non-exhaustive) activities:

• Grow food in various sized pods to service and feed the nations homeless, people at risk and very low income earners;
• Use a land share program to acquire 1,000 pods within 2 years of commencement and up to 10,000 pods across Australia within 10 years of commencement;
• Employ successful homeless candidates to operate pods;
• Establish a training program to train and skills test the homeless and people at risk in permaculture, horticulture, land management principles, and cookery;
• Establish a network of food vans in all capital cities and major regional cities to feed the homeless and people at risk using food grown from pods;
• Sell surplus produce and resources;
• Distribute our grown food to charitable and other organisations soup kitchens or food distribution and catering services;

As some families and members of the community have been interested in donating time on weekends and participating with their kids please feel free to email volunteermfp@mfp.org.au

If you would like to find out more please visit www.mfp.org.au