Upper Yarra Amazing Community Garden

Our dream is to transform unused ground at the Cire Community School to create an amazing garden hub, with chickens, to promote connectedness throughout our wider community, the sharing of resources and enhancing employment opportunities for our youth. It would be a community resource to engage people by working/contributing towards a common goal to maintain and grow fresh produce, connect with others and learn new skills with a focus on healthy eating and sustainability. The garden would complement the school’s hospitality program/commercial kitchen which facilitates valuable career pathways into the growing local hospitality/tourism sector for many of our at-risk students.

Our area is one of socio-economic disadvantage, isolation and high unemployment (ABS). As a chef at the Koha Community Café in Yarra Junction and a school parent, I know a community garden would benefit /engage the community enormously by:
- providing a healthy living-focused space for the wider community to connect and work towards
- strengthening the school’s drive to create local career pathways for students/help address youth unemployment with relevant training for the growing hospitality/tourism sector throughout the Yarra Valley
- providing Koha with grounds to grow/source fresh produce for meals for patrons, many of whom face socio-economic challenges.