Celebrating Global Sharing Week

Sharing. It seems like a concept that we are taught in childhood and learn to do as part of growing up but what does it really mean and how do we practice it as part of being an Incredible Edible group?

Global Sharing Week, runs from 16^th to 22^nd June and it feels especially important this year as the theme is Sharing Can Change the World. Isn’t that what we are all trying to do in our own ways, whether we are growing, supporting local enterprise or teaching skills to others within our communities? And the great thing about sharing is that anyone can get involved, with whatever your skills and you can feel that you have added something really useful to the group you’re working with.

So we thought about who we share things with at Incredible Edible and what how that fits into our collaborative work across the country.

Many groups work with young people and one of our main aims is to support the sharing of skills to all, but particularly young folk who are often completely unaware of how our food is grown. At Incredible Edible Wakefield the group often work with the Prince’s Trust, providing locations for their teams to come along and learn about effective work within their communities. As well as helping in the gardens, groups learn about supporting communities at a grassroots level by doing things such as fundraising which are all important skills often hard to get experience of.

In Incredible Edible Conwy the group have brought the kitchen garden of a house owned by the National Trust back to life. In the 19^th and early 20^th century it was a kitchen garden and the group have worked tirelessly to bring the garden back to life, with, as they say, “an Incredible twist”. The garden had completely been left to go to seed so sharing the land with the National Trust has brought huge benefit to the community, the National Trust and the Incredible Edible group.

At Incredible Edible Bristol the group often work with Good Gym Bristol, part of the national Good Gym organisation, who run from a set point to where they are going to help the group, do an hour of helping, usually with quite challenging tasks that they enjoy but might often be too much for the community gardeners working on that site, and then run back to their start point. This gives the group an excellent helping hand, often with up to 40 people turning up to help, so meaning a lot can be achieved in a short time, and the Good Gym members get to do some great work supporting more good work across the city.

All of these examples are fabulous examples of kindness in action. By sharing our spaces and looking at who there is around collaborate with us, what might at first appear daunting tasks or finding new pieces of land, are made easier. By sharing the work load, asking for help and being open to partnership working, we can catalyse more members of our communities to get involved with Incredible Edible groups which in turn enables the groups to support more work, ensuring the power of all our small actions are felt and become a real catalyst for change.

So for Global Sharing Week let’s promise to continue to look to organisations we can continue to share work and collaborate with. If you have a story of collaboration or sharing, why not let us tell it for you? Just contact us with some details and we’ll be in touch.  After all sharing our stories from across the network is a part of what we do and one of the ways we see sharing as a way to change the world.

Have a look at our map to find a group near you or our 10 Steps to being Incredible for ideas about starting a group in your area.