Justyna Traore of The Butler Community Centre Hive Garden has been announced as the Munster Community Hero.
Over 800 communities took part in Energia's Get Ireland Growing Champions with groups ranging from friends to badminton clubs.
Justyna's role in the Hive Garden is what won her the title. Her work involves planning for the group's week ahead, coordinating the garden's development, and providing a course on how to set up a community garden in an urban setting.
Justyna’s main interest was to make it possible for others to grow their vegetables and socialise in a healthy and functional environment.
The garden was inspired by Justyna’s experiences with creating another successful garden project, the 'Top of the City' Garden. The ‘Hive Garden’ design was adjusted to the needs of the local community.
Other winners
Five others won prizes and funding under different categories within the competition. Energia will provide the funding to each winner in order for them to continue and further develop their food-growing projects.
The other categories included a 'Best Transformation' award as well as a 'Most Impressive Gathering' award. Prizes awarded were GIY food growing starter kits, GIY vouchers, and a €1,000 cash prize.
Members of the public had the opportunity to nominate someone in their community for going above and beyond and to be named as their province's 'Community Hero.'
"We would like to congratulate each of the Community Heros and the community project winners on their growing success, each of the new champions has been awarded support and funding from Energia to enable them to further develop each of their food growing projects and we cant wait to see how these evolve,” Founder of GIY, Michael Kelly, said.
Get Ireland Growing was first launched by Energia in partnership with GIY in 2016 to promote community food growing projects nationwide. For more information, see their website.
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