Incredible Education have been delivering Potato Grow Kits to schools across Salford in an attempt to support the local community and frontline workers.
The agricultural enterprise, who are based in Salford, have been volunteering their time over the last two days to deliver the kits to schools in the area, with the aim of keeping kids entertained whilst their parents are out working on the frontline fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
The group delivered kits to Beech Street Community Primary School in Eccles on Tuesday morning, having delivered the first of the kits to Westwood Park Community Primary School the day before.
Ian Bocock, Director & Horticulture Educational Lead of Incredible Education, discussed the reasons behind the initiative.
He said: “Before we went into lockdown, we had a project called the Healthy Schools Partnership Challenge which is funded by NHS Salford CCG with the support of Salford CVS.
“Because of the current situation, we haven’t been able to deliver those projects, so we were thinking about what we could do instead.
“This week, we’ve started to roll out the Potato Growing Kits which are going to the primary schools that we would have been working with, in the projects.
“The idea is that the children whose parents are frontline workers have something to keep them entertained at school.”
The initiative comes off the back of the enterprise sending out 50 free ‘Stay Home and Grow Your Own Edible Plant Packs’ to homes across the M30 area of Salford last week.
“It’s well known that doing stuff in the garden, either growing or a physical activity, is really good.
“I think for us, it’s about coming out the other end of this in that people are probably going to change their attitudes to life in general, including learning how to grow food at home.
“Starting with a simple pack is a good way of getting people on that pathway of knowing what they can grow at home.
“We’ve had some really good feedback on our Facebook page – one post that we sent out about it last week was the busiest we’ve ever had on our page.
“We’re going to be doing another delivery this Friday. We discovered that delivering 50 packs in a day wasn’t practical last week! So we’re going to be delivering 20 more on Friday.”
The enterprise hope that distributing the packs will help to get more people into growing their own produce, with a view to it being something that is done more regularly once the lockdown is over, by the Salford community.
This includes at their new space at Cleavley Community Forest Garden, which was due to open before the pandemic, but has since been put back until it is safe to do so.
“I think it’s important that people connect with food and understand where food comes from.
“At this point in time, people are turning to the supermarkets but I think it’s important people connect with their food.
“A lot of this ties into our new site at Cleavley where we’re developing a community growing space where people can come and learn how to grow and what to grow.
“We’re fairly keen in making this sustainable from the point of view that people will want to keep growing. We’ve had some lovely images and feedback; it’s great to think there’s some young people out there learning a new skill.”
To find out more about the work being done by Incredible Education, follow them on Twitter and Facebook @IncrEdibleEdu or visit their website here
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