Engaging Young People in Food Growing

Contributor: Mona Bani from May Project Gardens

Event Information:

How can we encourage and support youth involvement and leadership in the urban food growing movement?

In this session, led by Mona Bani from May Project Gardens, we explored the culture of urban food growing and community gardening and who it is for.  Mona also looked at some of the key barriers of engaging teenagers and young adults in these spaces.

Contributor Bio:

Mona Bani is co-director of award winning grassroots organisation May Project Gardens, who work with marginalised urban communities to address poverty, disempowerment and access to resources and influences. She leads their work with young refugees and asylum seekers, and co-founded their media channel Untelevised, which explores possibilities for social change, where she also hosts their podcast series. She has a decade's experience in social policy and third sector development including as a Youth Policy Adviser to the Cabinet Office; Strategic Consultant to funders like National Lottery and Help Refugees; Author of policy reports for Demos and has spent time in the refugee camp in Calais. She's herself the child of political refugees from Iran and grew up in Copenhagen before migrating to London as a teenager.

About the Growing Resilience through Food Series

A series of 3 sessions aimed to engage and empower urban food growing spaces to explore ways of building stronger community bonds through collective growing spaces.

The conversations were led by inspiring food growers and community leaders that shared their knowledge and provided ideas and practical takeaways on areas such as youth engagement, growing culturally appropriate foods and connecting with your communities.

With huge thanks to Idman Abdurahaman who developed and curated these 'Growing Resilience through Food' sessions. Idman Abdurahaman is a climate justice researcher and environmental educator. She works on community-led gardening and food growing projects at Cordwainers Grow and is curating the upcoming BLooM series which is an initiative aimed to platform black nature practitioners across London.