When Cultivate Thrives: Developing Criteria for Community Economy Return on Investment

Abstract

Project overview: Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing. For Christchurch-based Cultivate, urban farms are not only physical places but also incorporate an innovative community economy premised on using common resources such as vacant urban land and green waste, to offer care for urban youth. Cultivate’s two urban farms are an important aspect of this care, for it is here that supportive and informally therapeutic environments are co-created and experienced by youth interns, urban farmers, trained social workers and volunteers. Cultivate’s urban farms are innovative examples of creative urban wellbeing initiatives that may be valuable for other organisations seeking to promote youth wellbeing and social development, both across New Zealand and further afield. To document and measure the holistic impact of Cultivate, we used a collaborative approach with Cultivate stakeholders to further develop an existing assessment tool: the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI). The project will finish in November 2018 with a series of workshops with urban designers to test and promote the use of the tool as a method for communicating the non-monetary return on investment to a wider community involved with other urban wellbeing projects.