The Children’s Centre’s Community Farm marks its first anniversary this month and is getting ready to open to the public in the spring. Over the past 12 months staff and volunteer have been creating a community farm based at Wallberry Farm on the Carnane Estate just off the Old Castletown Road in Douglas. The aim is to make it accessible to the whole community and offer children and young people from across the Island a chance to learn, from practical experience, the skills needed to care for animals and to grow crops. There will also be workshops at the Community Farm which can be used to learn skills that will be put to good use in maintaining and repairing farm tools and machinery.

Fundraising and voluntary work are vital to the farm’s continued success, and many businesses have supported the project with cash donations, and by staff giving up their free time to work on the farm. Over the past year there has been a steady stream of staff, from a wide range of businesses, visiting The Community Farm to do voluntary work. Last year, 705 hours of work was done by 60 volunteers drawn from companies including Abacus, Barclays Wealth, Deloitte, Lloyds, Pokerstars, Royal Skandia and Standard Bank. More corporate visitors are expected this year, not only to do voluntary work, but also to attend training courses organised by The Children’s Centre’s Corporate Professional Development (CPD) team which is based at the Community Farm.  Mark Payne, Head of Experiential Learning at The Children’s Centre, said:

“We’re extremely grateful to everyone who has supported The Community Farm in its first year, especially the volunteers who have worked on everything from putting up polytunnels to planting hedges. The volunteers have contributed a great deal to the development of The Community Farm, but we’ve also had a lot of positive feedback and many of them have commented about how much they have gained from the experience in terms of personal development. We look forward to welcoming more volunteers this year and would be glad to hear from any businesses or community organisations which are able to help. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are in the final stages of making The Community Farm ready for our open days on March 31 and April 1 when the wider Island community will have the chance to see what The Community Farm is all about.”

At present The Community Farm is home to three pigs, two cats, a dog and in a few weeks time they will be joined by a donkey called Juan.

For more information about The Community Farm go to http://www.thechildrenscentre.org.im/what-we-do/community-farm/
For information about volunteering contact Chrissy Cannell, Farm Development Officer, on 610540 or by emailing farm@thechildrenscentre.org.im

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