A number of key projects across Cork will receive funding as part of the €1.5 million investment in Safefood’s all-island Community Food Initiatives Programme 2025-28. This four-year programme aims to positively influence the eating habits of people in low-income communities, fostering lasting change and strengthening community resilience around healthier eating.
Ballyhoura Development CLG, who serve communities in north east Cork (and east Limerick), have been selected, facilitating their project to deliver family cooking programmes using the Healthy Food Made Easy scheme. It will also integrate with a food mapping project, involving the community in mapping their own food environment to understand what makes it easy or hard to find healthy choices.
The Safefood initiative will support each group to establish, manage, and sustain a local food initiative that promotes lasting behaviour change and strengthens community resilience around healthier eating. One of the other projects to be funded in Cork, includes the IRD Duhallow CLG’s project to deliver seasonal food workshops, cooking workshops for children, livestream sessions, and healthy recipes via social media.
HELPING CREATE ‘LONG-LASTING CHANGE’
“We’re excited to launch our latest round of Safefood Community Food Initiatives,” said Dr Gary A. Kearney, Chief Executive, Safefood. “They have a proven track record of effectiveness and success, and we want to extend their impact by doubling the scale and increasing the scope of our work to include not only good nutritional and healthy eating help but also including ‘tips and tricks’ around food safety for members of the public.
“In addition to the 28 projects, which will be funded for 4 years announced today, we are introducing a new cross border partnership that will fund a further 4 cross border projects. We will also be funding 25 additional one-off community projects each year under the scheme.
“This year marks 15 years since we first started working among communities and more than 65,000 people have taken part since then. By supporting people in low-income communities, these projects have the potential to create long-lasting changes in how people shop, plan and cook food. Ultimately, this work is about improving the access to, and availability of, healthy and safe food in our communities.”
In welcoming the launch of Safefood’s Community Food Initiatives Programme, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD said that they help build practical skills and knowledge at the grassroots level in a time when “unhealthy food choices are increasingly becoming the norm, impacting the health of our population”.
For more information on The Community Food Initiatives (CFI) Programme 2025–2028 visit www.safefood.net/community-food-initiatives
