Thanks to….Our funding partners and sponsors

In the beginning

After setting up the Community Interest Company in the summer of the Covid lockdown in 2020, we had no funding. As we crystallised our vision for the business we continued to work every day to build the foundations for a thriving social farm and nature connection space . The summer weather was hot, social distancing rules were operating and people were fearful of meeting others. We began clearing areas of bramble and nettles so we could grow food. We used a regenerative approach to clearing and planting, maintaining the integrity of the long term undisturbed nature of the landscape. Volunteers came to help dig the trenches through compacted rock to erect our first, tiny polytunnel. Throughout the first wet winter of 2020 to 2021 we grew organic green leafy vegetables in the tiny tunnel and a range of spuds, kale, chard, beans and spinach in the newly created outdoor beds.

In the summer of 2021 our first social event took place over a weekend with music, poetry and dancing as well as educational workshops such as making foraged healing balms, nature art, permaculture farming discussions, meditation workshops and more. The event was a success and the feedback from the event encouraged our Director team to explore the possibilities of applying for funding to support our project. We were unsure of how to go forward to manifest our collective vision of a natural wild haven and food resource for the community.

Thanks to the School for Social Entrepreneurs

Working with a series of experienced and informative business mentors, the SSE challenged our ideas and advised and guided us on how to create a top quality organisation that could survive the current economic crisis and contribute a remedy, an alternative social narrative. The business mentors helped us over a period of months to design and implement excellent business planning approaches, policies and procedures as well as enabling us to feel increasingly empowered and confident in our collective venture. As well as gaining skills and knowledge from the School for Social Entrepreneurs we gained an understanding that we have a valuable and very socially relevant business with the administrative infrastructure to support it. However, for the core volunteer team these were hard times…

Thanks to the National Lottery

The volunteers who had self funded and worked all hours for over a year began to lose motivation, burn out and struggle to achieve a reasonable work life balance. As the summer of 2021 was ending, we questioned the sustainability of the company. We had been told that our idea was good but there was no money to support it any more. The volunteers who had given their time and money to keep the project alive could no longer do so. We were exhausted and broke. None of the high street banks were able to take on new business accounts as a result of the furlough rules. We worked alongside our business mentors from the School for Social Entrepreneurs to find a bespoke banking solution . After many hours of searching and seeking advice we finally secured a bank account as the restrictions of the furlough scheme ended and we were enormously relieved and grateful to receive our first funded award to support the work we had begun : to create a garden outreach project. We erected the second, larger polytunnel and developed more outdoors growing space so that by the start of the winter 2021 we had more than enough vegetables to feed ourselves and were able to supply fresh, organic vegetables to two food banks on a weekly basis (Growing Links in Penzance and Food Troops in Redruth).

As the new year rolled on it became clear that volunteers were less in number. The cold wet windy weather didn’t suit fair weather gardeners, people were still fearful of socialising and, to be fair, we are not on a bus route and fairly remote from any large community. In the spring of 2021 we made the decision to shift the emphasis of our garden outreach activity : as well as continuing to grow food here every day at Ro Dama Farm, we would also travel to our community of interest. We stepped up our support for Food Troops CIC and immediately had access to a large urban population who genuinely valued what we had to offer. We have continued to attend the Redruth food education and redistribution group every Tuesday.

We have worked with local people of all ages and backgrounds to erect two polytunnels and provided plants and vegetables to the local folk who attend the group. Our partnership with Food Troops CIC has been amazing! We meet more and more community members from the Redruth/Camborne area and provide fresh organic food each week for them as well as having the chance of inviting these new people to the events and courses that we offer at the Farm.

We have kept up our firm connection to the Growing Links organisation in Penzance where we continue to deliver fresh organic vegetables grown at Ro Dama Farm every Friday to their food bank project. It is the National Lottery funding that has enabled the long-standing volunteers to receive reimbursement for materials, travel and, importantly , a day a week gardening time to support the outreach project work. Because of the generosity of the Lottery organisation we have worked throughout the year to produce food, offer educational events , offer healing and mindful events and offer joyful creative community events to local people. Our annual community event in the summer of 2022 gathered over a hundred local people over the weekend. With a full programme of healing, meditative and restorative sessions we delivered another remarkable experience of joyful community cohesion in tranquil nature for local people of all ages.

In early 2023 we are honoured to receive a second National Lottery Grow your own Outreach funding award. With this funding we will be able to continue to develop the garden so that we grow more food. We will continue to support our local food redistribution network with fresh organic food every week. We can now explore further well being and nature education events for local people. We can continue to offer job skills training such as hedge building and citizen science events for young people.

Thanks to Camborne Town Council

We received funding in 2022 from our local council to support our intention to offer skills training opportunities at Ro Dama. This money was used to deliver a series of Cornish Hedge building workshops with a professional practitioner. The workshops were fascinating and fully positive, enjoyed by both the young and older people who attended.