The winners of this year’s Energia Get Ireland Growing initiative with GIY were announced on July 22nd, and among the winners is Helen Murphy of Glenamaddy Community Garden, who has been dubbed 2022’s ‘Connaught Community Hero’.
As part of the Energia Get Ireland Growing initiative, members of the public were asked to nominate someone in their community who had gone above and beyond to support others to grow, with nominees being in with a chance of being named as their province’s ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing Community Hero’.
Six prize-winners have been identified as the national ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing Champions’ of 2022 – four ‘Community Hero’ winners and two awards for the best community transformation and most impressive community gathering respectively. Each of the winners have been awarded prizes and funding from Energia to enable them to continue and further develop each of their food-growing projects.
Helen Murphy was awarded the title of Connaught Community Hero on the back of the work she’s done with Glenamaddy Community Garden. This food-growing garden is aimed at bringing the people of the community together to encourage community sustainability. Diversity is also a focus point for the group and members of the community garden range from age 88 to playschool age, and the group also includes new members of the community from Ukraine.
Energia Get Ireland Growing was first launched by Energia in partnership with GIY in 2016 to promote community food growing projects nationwide. For further details please see getirelandgrowing.i
