Seeds of Change: Biodiverse Community Gardens as Tools for Social Empowermentg
with Julian Siegers from CIGL Esch and Ina Säumel from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The benefits of biodiverse community gardens in the urban landscape are not limited to ecological aspects. Rather, various initiatives and programs in recent years have shown that community gardening and the integration of vulnerable groups in particular promote social cohesion. In the webinar, you will learn from best practice examples from Berlin and Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg) how both aspects are combined and successfully implemented.
About the Speakers:
Julian Siegers is responsible for the “Ville Mangeable (Edible City) Esch-sur-Alzette” project and works at CIGL Esch, a non-profit association whose aim is to help unemployed people find work and reintegrate into society, and to develop services that meet the population's unmet needs. His tasks are the supervision, animation and management of 5 community gardens, awareness campaigns via urban gardening projects and the development and realization of the Interreg project InteGRaVert, starting January 2025 if approved. He presents urban gardening projects that showcase the diversity of species on small surfaces, and make biodiversity “palpable” in the true sense of the word. All these activities are carried out in the context of professional integration and thanks to the experience in market gardening and environmental education of the Kalendula and Escher Geméisguart projects.
Ina Säumel leads the Multifunctional Landscapes research group at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She conducts and supervises research on urban and landscape ecology, land use change, sustainable use of resources and environmental pollution with a special focus on developing concepts for multifunctional, biodiversity-friendly and healthy landscapes. Over the last years, she led the following research projects: “Edible Cities Network” (EU H2020), “HEBEDI” & “RuralFutures” (BMBF) and “HealthyLiving “ (Berg Stiftung, Deutscher Stifterverband). During the webinar, she provides an overview of the Berlin Senate's 'Social Cohesion' programme and emphasizes the role of supporting community gardens as an informal approach to urban planning.
Read and download the presentations (including links from the chat) via the following link: ediblecitiesnetwork.com/resource/363