Page 12 - Caring_for_your_community

There are also projects whose focus is at once social and
environmental. For example, the aim of Dynamic Cultivations:
Native Aromatic and Medicinal Plants, at Balkan BG was both to
reduce unemployment in Greece and also to encourage the use
of native plants. Hence the garden provided training courses to
assist participants to establish their own enterprises based on
sustainable farming of native plants (see page 14). The project
successfully united the two goals, simultaneously addressing
environmental and social issues. At Medellín BG the aim was
to develop a project which combined conservation of wildcane
and the broader biodiversity of the Lucas Mountains, with the
preservation of indigenous culture (see page 15). By encouraging
the community to produce and sell the traditional Colombian
vueltiao hat, the project has encouraged the Zenú to appreciate
the wildcane, from which the hat is made. Seeing how important
it is for their livelihood, the community has become involved
in the conservation of the plant’s habitat and thus of the entire one. What is important is that careful consideration be paid
local ecosystem. Furthermore, through educational activities and
the repopularization of such traditional craftwork, the project
helps to conserve the culture of the Zenú community. As with
the Citi Entrepreneurs project, the community’s livelihood
is now tethered to the sustainable use of wildcane and to
conserving the local biodiversity, bringing about sustained
behavioural change and environmental stewardship.
©In C olombia, wild cane is sustainably harvested and
used to make the iconic vueltiao hat Simon Trujillo
We can see that the focus of such projects is on a spectrum
– at one end those that focus purely on the environment, and
at the other those that focus purely on society – but that is
not to say that the impacts of the projects are limited to this
though, merely the project conception. There is a huge amount
of freedom at the planning stage. Whether a garden’s mission
is predominantly environmental, educational, or somewhere in
between, it is possible to enhance the current offer by focusing
on social issues.
The range of social issues gardens can choose from is vast and
a socially focused project will inevitably address more than
to the target audience’s needs, the social benefits a garden
has the power to deliver and how these can be linked to the
organisation’s mission.