Help us to build ‘Community Allotments’ inside a Romford shopping centre.

Local group, The NO Collective, in support of The Mercury Shopping Centre plan to build the UK’s first ‘Community Vertical Allotments’ inside the shopping centre in Romford, and they need your help to support to give community groups and charities access to free fresh food in the area.

They are looking for as many small donations of £2.00 to their Spacehive fund by tomorrow, by local people to persuade The Mayor of London to donate up to £50,000 to the cause. The more backers they have, the more money they are likely to receive towards their initiative – proving that local people really do have the power to create change in their local towns.

Once built the ‘Rise High Allotment’ project will provide 18 lockers that will be gifted to local community groups and charities to grow food for people in need and to support their wellbeing activities. Local community groups already signed up to receive an allotment include The Havering Volunteer Centre, HOPEC and the Orchard Village community who have all been hugely active during the covid-19 response in feeding local people.

A vertical allotment is a stack of allotments that uses hydroponics to grow plants in the quickest way possible. Each ‘locker allotment’ will have double the growing capability of a large allotment that you would find in a plot, but will only use a tiny amount of resources to grow food much faster. 

Spencer Hawken, manager of The Mercury says: “This allotment programme will be a huge asset for our local community, not only for the amount of food that will be grown for locals in need – but also because of the world class education it will bring to children in the area”.

The project will see local education and participation at the centre of the scheme, with engineering lessons planned with the creators of the allotments for schools and community leaders. It will also support health and nutrition awareness too for young children. 

“We are thrilled to be able to support such an innovative programme, and hope others do too as we feel it could really change the way people live in towns and cities.” Says Spencer. 

The sustainable technology has been developed in Copenhagen in a leading research company which focuses on getting food to those who need it most. Once installed, this will be the first of its kind in the UK – putting Romford on the map for community innovation. 

To help support this local food growing project, please pledge £2.00 or more via The NO Collective’s website: 

http://nocollective.co.uk/rise-high-allotments

or Spacehive:

https://www.spacehive.com/risehighurbanallotments?searchText=rise%20high%20allotments

The NO Collective will be fundraising for this project until May 2021 but hope to receive a large grant by The Mayor of London. So if you can, please donate before tomorrow. 

We are also looking for support with ‘likes’ and shares on our project page. This will also help us to raise awareness anddoesn’t cost a penny to do!

If you are a business and would like to sponsor this project from as little as £50.00, or you would like any more information, please get in touch with Natalie@nocollective.co.uk .