GIY donate Food Garden to Cork Association for Autism

Michael Kelly founder of GIY and Rena O’Donovan of Cully & Sully with Ben Martin of Chiropractors from Optimal Chiropractic in Cork who were named ‘Grow at Work’ winners 2015

€3,000 Food Garden donated to Cork Association for Autism following the successful ‘Grow at Work’ Campaign with Grow It Yourself (GIY) /Cully & Sully

Horticulture

Read More: Charity Food GIY Grow At Work Grow Your Own Growers

7 October 2015

Earlier this year GIY and Cully & Sully teamed up to launch a fun Grow at Work campaign dubbed #GivePeasAChance which challenged teams to grow food at work and offering the winners a food garden worth €3,000 to donate to a charity or community group of their choice and €2,000 worth of vouchers for Ballymaloe House and Cookery School for the winning team.

Chiropractors from Optimal Chiropractic in Cork were named ‘Grow at Work’ winners 2015 today with their chosen charity the Cork Association for Autism presented with €3,000 for their GIY Food Garden.

The prize comes at a perfect time for Cork Association for Autism who have just opened a brand new day service centre in Mogeely in county Cork. Commenting on the prize Marion Courtney of Cork Association for Autism said “We are thrilled, this is a fantastic windfall; we work with adults with autism and one of our therapy practices is a horticulture therapy programme so the donation of €3,000 towards our GIY Garden at our new centre will bring much learning and joy to all of our service users. A big thank you to Optimal Chiropractic for all of their successful growing and of course for nominating us as their chosen charity.”

450 teams from companies all across Ireland from a variety of sectors including train drivers, bankers, solicitors, security guards, post office workers and journalists all took up the food growing challenge. But a team of 5 Chiropractors demonstrated their food growing passion in the challenge from the outset.

Commenting on the growing initiative founder of GIY Michael Kelly said, “#GivepeasAChance has been quite simply a huge success in terms of getting over 2,000 people growing food at work for the first time. We know that many people who are interested in growing their own are a little daunted by the whole thing – afraid to start, afraid to make a bags of it, afraid they don’t have green fingers and that they will kill something!

He added “At GIY we are big believers in the power of even small food growing experiences can change lives and get people reconnected with their food in a meaningful way so getting such a huge number of people growing peas from a pot at work has been incredible and we hope that they keep up the fantastic work and are converted GIY’ers.”

GIY will be re-visiting the Cork Association for Autism Centre in Mogeely over the next number of weeks to put in their new GIY garden.

Read More: Charity Food GIY Grow At Work Grow Your Own Growers