Grounded Community

In celebration of national #TrusteesWeek, today we spotlight our friend and Trustee, John Richards 🌟 A trained teacher, John gained over 20 years’ experience in his local community in Berkshire, in children’s and youth work. He then took up a role as a National Youth Coordinator, until becoming a pastor in a non-denominational Church setting in London. After relocating to Bournemouth, John joined Grounded Community as a Trustee, and is continuing to focus his efforts on supporting the next generation; endeavouring to emphasise the importance of community care, and of love and concern for our neighbour. Thank you for all you do John, your kindness, compassion and community spirit shines brightly 💝 If you’d like to learn more about our work and see how you can get involved, visit our website here: https://lnkd.in/eyFvtHMD 🙌🏼 You can also find out about this week’s range of events and access free guidance and resources at www.trusteesweek.org 🤝 #TrusteesWeek #groundedcommunity #commitment #gratitude #kindness #compassion #communitydevelopment #BCPcommunity #TogetherWeCanGrow

Trustees, looking for a better way to make decisions? Take a look at our 5-minute guides for some helpful advice.

In celebration of national #trusteesweek2024 , today we spotlight our charity founder, Michael French 🌟 Michael came to volunteer at the Secret Garden in 2014. As a community education professional, he spent 28 years engaging communities through youth work, supporting drug and alcohol recovery, community mapping and as a nightclub chaplain. His DJ and dance passions paid him to build up our six Grounded projects, when in 2020 he was instrumental in founding Grounded Community as a registered charity, and securing our funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.  He is now a Trustee and committed to building community resilience via market gardening, https://lnkd.in/e3RrQ43J, as well as engaging Churches and the wider community to grow more food in their urban green spaces. Thank you for all you do Michael. Your determination and commitment is an inspiration to us all 🌱 If you’re interested in learning more about the essential role that soil plays in human health, as well as the inspiring story of our British farmers standing up against the industrial food system, Michael will be speaking at a FREE screening of the the powerful documentary Six Inches Of Soil (https://lnkd.in/eXd_FVH7) at Bournemouth University on 27th Nov from 4.30pm. The film will be followed by a panel discussion and Michael will join the incredible film Producer, Claire Mackenzie, as well as Clyde Jones from Soil Association and George Holmes, Director at Arla Foods 🌱 Grab your FREE ticket here: https://lnkd.in/eSrcaUmN 🎫 You can find out about this week’s range of events for #trusteesweek2024 and access free guidance and resources at www.trusteesweek.org 🤝 #TrusteesWeek #groundedcommunity #commitment #gratitude #communitydevelopment #MarketGardening #BCPcommunity #SixInchesOfSoil #BournemouthUniversity #TogetherWeCanGrow

It’s #TrusteesWeek! 🥳 The time of year when we celebrate the amazing contribution made by trustees for their charities and recognise the difference they make. You can find out about this week’s range of events and access free guidance and resources at www.trusteesweek.org 🤝 Trustees’ Week is a time for us to come together to celebrate the achievements of nearly one million trustees across the UK. Thank you for the time, commitment, and effort you bring to your charities to help them thrive 🥇 Today we would like to spotlight our Chair of Trustees, John Hanson 🌟 With a background in international community development, project management and bid management in the construction sector, John brings a breadth of experience to his role as Chair of Trustees. John has been volunteering with Grounded since 2015, passionately employing his engineering talents and enthusiastic approach to help design and build our off-grid shack, outdoor classroom and chicken coop. We were delighted for John when he recently announced his permanent role as CEO at The Parks Foundation. We’re so grateful for his invaluable contribution to our charity and we wish him continued success 🏆 Find out more about how you can get involved at Grounded Community here: https://lnkd.in/eyFvtHMD 🙌🏼 #TrusteesWeek #groundedcommunity #commitment #gratitude #communitydevelopment #can100 #BCPcommunity #togetherwecangrow

Our new social supermarket “The Pantry” is part of our Feed our Community project, based at St George’s Church on Haviland Road 🥐 This new community space continues to go from strength to strength, re-distributing food surplus collected by our amazing volunteers from local supermarkets, and supplemented with fresh organic veggies from the Secret Garden 🥦 During the month of September, we saved 3,240 kgs of food from landfill - that's the equivalent weight of a baby blue whale! 🐳 Prior to switching our set up to a social supermarket operation, the team distributed 334 food boxes, with 512 adults and 172 children on the books. The new Pantry space now empowers our visitors to choose exactly what they want and need 🛒 A huge THANK YOU goes out to everyone who chipped in and helped during this challenging, but also fun and exciting time 🙌🏼 Our fantastic volunteers continuously step up to make a difference to the local community every single day 🙏 If you’d like to sign up for a “Pantry Pick” or find out how you can get involved, DM George via our Facebook project page: https://lnkd.in/eKHRrzGg 📥 #groundedcommunity #feedourcommunity #thepantry #cuttingwaste #socialsupermarket #savesurplus #BCPCommunity

Our charity Founder, Michael French, is looking forward to speaking at the Dorset COP 2024 on Sat 2nd Nov from 1.45pm🎙️ His session will be part of a group cooperative, with talks and break out workshops to focus on Food Governance and Strategy and “The Power of Good Food Partnerships across Dorset” 💚 Speakers include our friends at #HelpAndKindness and Bournemouth University, amongst others 🥦🥕🤝 If you’d like to be part of the “Good Food Movement” and have your voice and ideas heard, you can book tickets via this link: https://lnkd.in/eUFUzM2a? 🎫 #groundedcommunity #goodfoodmovement #BCPCommunity #DorsetCOP24 #foodsustainability #HelpAndKindness #bournemouthuniversity

If you've visited us recently, you may have been welcomed by the latest addition to the Secret Garden: our herb spiral 🌿 🌀 A herb spiral is a raised bed which efficiently makes use of water, sunlight and gravity to create separate microclimateswhere different herbs can grow ☀️ 🌧️ The spiral design means that one side of the bed receives full sun, while the other side offers a more shaded and protected space; water drains from the top to the bottom creating zones for dry-and wet-tolerant herbs; the compact shape makes growing and harvesting easy, as all herbs are accessible 🌿 We had been planning a revamp of our herb garden for a while, when we had the opportunity to finalise the herb spiral design at our Level 2 City & Guilds horticulture course, run by BCHA Learn, earlier this year. The spiral was built during two of our weekly volunteer sessions and is made of reclaimed terracotta roof tiles, giving it a rustic look 💡 🙌🏼 The “foot of the spiral” is a sunken mint wicking bed. To minimise costs, the herbs we chose were already in the garden (plants or seeds) or freely available from staff/volunteers' gardens: thank you so much for the aromatic donations! 🙏🏻 We recently enjoyed a team outing to collect big pebbles, which were then painted by volunteers to use as plant signs. We're now watching the herbs grow, thrive and bring a variety of scents and colours for each season... and joy all year round! 🌿 💚

If you're curious to learn more about the amazing health benefits of herbs, our Home & Community Herb Group started last weekend and runs monthly on Saturday’s from 9.45am to 11.15am. Tickets can be booked via this link: https://lnkd.in/e4MUnVVS 🎫 #groundedcommunity #HerbSpiral #CommunityHerbGroup #BCPcommunity #MedicinalHerbs #TogetherWeCanGrow

Our charity founder Michael French is delighted to be joining the Producer, Claire Mackenzie, of the powerful documentary Six Inches of Soil, for a panel talk after a screening at Bournemouth University on 27th Nov from 4pm 💚 https://lnkd.in/eBNysEFC This FREE event is open to students, staff and the general public 🤝 If you’re interested in learning more about the essential role that soil plays in human health, as well as the inspiring story of our British farmers standing up against the industrial food system, grab a ticket using the link below 🎫 These incredible humans are transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, benefit our health and provide for local communities 💚 We’d love to meet like minded connections for an uplifting evening 🤝 #groundedcommunity #SixInchesOfSoil #SoilAssociation #sustainablefoodsystems #PermacultureAssociation #BCPCommunity #TogetherWeCanGrow

On Wednesday evening our friendly Grounded Gatherers team met at Shelley Park, for a hunt for Horse Chestnuts to make detergent 🌰 🧼 But.. they were unsuccessful 🫣 That didn’t disappoint our curious foragers though. Instead, they discovered Gorse and Evening Primrose flowers to dry and add to their tea collection 🌼 ☕️ Demonstrating that even when things don’t go quite the way we planned, there is always a silver lining and new discoveries to be made 🙌🏼 🌈 The group then enjoyed a magical stroll in good company AND had the exciting surprise of bat watching 🦇 against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset 🌅🤩 You can read more about the health benefits of these amazing flowers in the photos, including the spot where the bats were found, as they were way too zippy to get caught on camera! 🦇💨 If you’d like to come and join the group, you’d be most welcome 🤝 Head over to our “Feed Our Community” Facebook page to DM George, or comment below, and she can add you to our WhatsApp group📱🍎 #groundedcommunity #groundedgatherers #forageresponsibly #eveningprimrose #gorseflowers #batwatching #learningtogether

Last week three members of the Grounded team had the great pleasure of joining an incredibly inspiring workshop on the subject of Asset Based Community Development (otherwise known as ABCD), delivered by the wonderful Tim Evans 🤝 Many community developers will already be aware of this approach and can effectively demonstrate their social impact showing how “tapping into the treasure chest of our community” is the key to flourishing neighbourhoods💰 Whilst we were delighted to affirm that our community-led approach at Grounded Community has always been at the heart of our charity values “Together We Can Grow”, it was so inspiring to learn more about this empowering approach and it’s 5 key principles: 💚 Neighbour-led 💚 Relationship-oriented 💚 Asset (or gift) based 💚 Place-rooted 💚 Inclusion-focused We spoke about the power of reciprocity and that ultimately all people want to be valued AND be valuable, and the enormous ripple effect that can have, both individually and collectively 🌊 It has given our team new energy to delve deeper and ask “power questions” in both our team meetings and amongst our community (The 5 Why’s) and focus on what’s STRONG, not what’s wrong 🌟 We particularly loved three powerful quotes, which really seemed to crystallise the strength of our holacratic approach to the governing of our charity (more on this soon: www.holacracy.org) 💭 💚 “Big enough to make a contribution, but small enough to be (truly) known” 💚 “Trust comes in by foot, and out by horse” 💚 “Here is a place where conversations happen, which may go somewhere” We may just have to print a plaque of the last quote at the entrance to the Secret Garden! 🤩 If you’d like to hear more about our charity, we run monthly weekend community meals at the Secret Garden, where we celebrate and connect with our community 🥘 All dates can be found on our event calendar here: https://lnkd.in/eJZxB4KB 📆 We hope to continue developing our great new connections made with other amazing local charities too.. networking is gold.. thank you Tim Evans and West Howe Community enterprise for hosting us at the wonderful Henry Brown Community Centre 🤝 #groundedcommunity #ABCD #communityled #assetbased #networking #powerquestions #5whys #reciprocity #TogetherWeCanGrow