Here’s a great idea to get in touch with the world’s food security challenges, while helping people who are starving right now, start or improve your own home food gardening.
This Sunday, October 16, is United Nations World Food Day around which the major humanitarian aid group Oxfam Australia is running Gather to Grow week to support its East Africa Food Crisis Appeal.
Cityfood Growers, an Australasia-wide online service for organic home food gardening is supporting Oxfam Australia’s Gather to Grow week and the East Africa appeal.
Cityfood Growers provides its subscribers with online advice and support to be successful home food growers, blending the best of organic, biodynamic and permaculture gardening principles.
It provides comprehensive information on more than 300 food crops, vegetables, fruit trees, herbs and many Australian native food plants, all tailored automatically to match the local climatic conditions anywhere in Australia, New Zealand and also the United States.
From October 15 to 22, every new subscriber to the Cityfood Growers online subscription service will each be helping to deliver a total of $20 worth of donations to Oxfam Australia.
This is how it works:
- New subscribers join Cityfood Growers at the website http://www.cityfoodgrowers.com.au (the full cost is $49 for a 12-month subscription, however, there’s a 10 per cent discount for joining immediately)
- Oxfam Australia’s East Africa appeal will receive a $10 donation (through Cityfood Growers) for every new subscriber during the eight-day period of Gather to Grow
- This in turn will trigger an additional $10 donation from the Australian Government, which has undertaken to match Oxfam Australia fund-raising for East Africa dollar for dollar until November 30
Celebrated each year on October 16, World Food Day marks the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on that day in 1945.
Its objectives include encouraging attention to agricultural food production; economic and technical cooperation among developing countries, participation of rural people, particularly women and the least privileged; technology transfers from the developed world to the developing world; and heightening public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world.
For 2011, the World Food Day theme is Food prices: from crisis to stability and you can see more at: http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/
Gather to Grow week will run from Saturday October 15 to the following Saturday, October 22, including World Food Day on the 16.
Gather to Grow is running in support of Oxfam Australia’s East Africa Food Crisis Appeal, and also is part of the international Oxfam organisation’s GROW campaign, which is aimed at addressing the world’s food security challenges to help reduce poverty.
Oxfam says: ‘We can grow in a better way, one that contributes much more to human wellbeing, and ensures that everyone on the planet will always have enough to eat.’
You can find out more at: Oxfam Australia http://www.oxfam.org.au/grow/gather/ or Oxfam International & GROW – http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/what-is-grow
