WHO WE ARE

Our Story

Make It Grow is a Knowledge Exchange project for the Institute for Sustainable Food, University of Sheffield, supported by the UKRI's Economic and Social Research Council. 

In the face of today's multifaceted global challenges, community-based food initiatives are becoming increasingly important. It is important to acknowledge that great ideas for low-cost and dynamic solutions to food insecurity are often already present at the local grassroots level. However, community-based initiatives often have the least access to funding and the least capacity to develop funding proposals.

With access to the means of both generating and sharing video becoming ever more prevalent, it is important that organisations adapt grant-giving processes so that digital video can be mobilised in ways that enhance the accessibility of funding and give greater space to local initiatives and community voice. At the same time, it is also critical that community-based organisations build their own capacity to harness the power of video and related ICTs, to communicate their ideas and thus, become more capable of attracting start-up funds. 

Small Changes with Big Difference

Ten years ago, a handbook on "Making Video Proposals" was developed by Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya for the United Nations Development Programme's Global Environment Facility Barbados office, as a first attempt to support community groups to make video applications for their Small Grants Programme.

Since then, digital technology has moved on apace, with smartphones, apps, video technologies and wi-fi becoming increasingly prevalent and easily accessible, even for lower income communities in the Global South. It is thus an apt moment to revise and update the methodological toolkits available to NGOs and community-based organisations (CBOs), to better support communities worldwide to create their own video proposals to submit to funding programs such as the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF's SGP), as well as linking to crowd-funding platforms. 

OUR TEAM

We are a small women-led Story Harvesting Collective focused on community-based stories of change and agri-food visions for the future. We are dedicated to amplifying the stories of small-scale food producers around the world.

Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya 

Project Leader, Knowledge 

Exchange Research Fellow 

and Learning Facilitator

Alexandra Plummer 

Project Assistant, Graphic Recorder 

and Co-facilitator

Rudo Chakanyuka

Graphic Recorder, Design and 

Workshop Support

Lydia Kerin 

Media and Publicity Officer

Peter Jackson

Co-Director of the Institute for 

Sustainable Food, Professor of

 Geography, The University of Sheffield

Project Partners and Collaborators: 

United Nations Development Program Small Grants Programme, Zimbabwe

  • Tsitsi Wutawunashe: National Coordinator
  • Luckson Chapungu: Programme Assistant

Local Non-Profit Organisations:                                               

Participating Community Based Organisations:

  • MTHANDAZO


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