Last month, I was invited to Berlin to attend the Lush Spring Prize and learn about how people all over the world are developing ways to live in harmony with nature and drive regeneration through their work.
The Lush Spring Prize
The Lush Spring Prize is a joint venture held between Lush and Ethical Consumer. It’s a biennial prize fund of over £200,000 that is awarded to communities, organisations and businesses across the world. From generating renewable resources to restoring ecosystems, nurturing solidarity and building resilience, recipients in their own myriad of ways are encouraging regeneration and restoration.
This year, £236,000 was awarded to 17 groups as part of the prize, making a total of over £1 million awarded since the programme began in 2017. During our time in Berlin at the EUREF Campus, we had the opportunity to learn what the prize winners are doing to lead the charge.
Learning from the Lush Prize recipients
Over the course of two days, we heard from inspiring individuals on how they are building the health of ecology, economy and social systems. I was humbled to have learnt so much in such a short span of time, a number of the sessions that I attended included:
🌱How might we transition our food systems to address systemic climate change?
🌱How do we best tell regenerative stories
🌱Regenerative economies: How we can move towards nature-inspired business models
🌱Learning about the Awaete experience of art, decolonization, regeneration, and co- creation.
🌱 Discovering the young agro-ecological movements in Palestine
🌱The infinite potential of fungi: A mushroom medicine workshop
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Spotlight: Lush Prize recipients and regeneration pioneers
I wanted to shine a spotlight on a few of the prize winners and their purpose:
🌎 Rawa Fund (Palestine) – Winner of the Influence Projects Award
Rawa works to advocate for and strengthen an emancipatory, resilient Palestinian grassroots social ecosystem. Envisioning a liberated, self-determined, just, and participatory society, Rawa sees intersectional grassroots communities as the key anchors for Palestinian people to access
power, share resources, and uphold collective well-being and abundance.
Rawa’s pilot participatory grant making and holistic support model launched in 2018. Over 60 grants have been awarded to grassroots community-based initiatives across the West Bank, Jerusalem, 48 areas, and Gaza. These initiatives include Community-supported agriculture and cooperatives, women-led social enterprise, grassroots first aid training, recycling and creative reuse, mobile political theatre groups, disability organising in refugee camps, youth political organising and many more.
🌎 Instituto Janeraka (Brazil) – Winner of the Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award
The Janeraka Institute was born in the Amazon region, Altamira, from the Awaete ancestry in the resistance of a population with less than 50 years of contact with the global society.
Since then, the Awaete population has faced numerous psychosocial and ecological challenges, such as the consequences of genocide and ethnocide since the first contact, which has been increasing with the construction of hydroelectric power plants, mining activities, culminating in one of the worst deforestations in the world, threatening the existence of the water peoples, land and forest, in the region and around the planet. Janeraka is an Awaete word meaning “neither mine nor yours, our house, and the house belongs to the one who takes care of it”. All of the Janeraka Institute’s activities are centred on strengthening the traditional Awaete culture and exchanging knowledge and practices with other forest peoples
🌎 Rwamwanja Rural Foundation (Uganda) – Winner of the Young Projects Award
Rwamwanja Rural Foundation is a Ugandan-based, refugee-led grassroots organisation. It works specifically with communities in refugee camps and other marginalised communities affected by climate change in East Africa.
Refugee populations the foundation works with are at high risk of hunger and malnutrition, exacerbated by high prices caused by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Foundation was established to empower refugee youth to fulfil their potential and enable them to transform their lives. It aims to ensure these communities can restore local ecosystems, increasing climate resilience and biodiversity, while benefiting from regenerative agriculture activities that improve access to nutritious food. It brings together permaculture, Indigenous farming techniques, local languages as well as modern, affordable and easily accessible digital technologies to enhance reach and overall impact.
In conversation with Bemeriki Bisimwa Dusabe, Founder of the Rwamwanja Rural Foundation
The Lush Spring Prize handbook wrote “The people most affected by poverty, climate change, war, and political suppression are some of the most resilient and smart people regarding innovation, mutual care, and respect for all living beings.”
As the daughter of a refugee, I am always astounded by the resilience and tenacity of communities forced to leave their homes and countries. I was particularly struck by the work of Bemeriki at the Rwamwanja Rural Foundation. We spoke about the mission and activities of the Foundation, below are snippets of our conversation, please follow their work and support in any way you can.
Q: Through your work, you empower refugees and provide them with opportunities to generate income and make an impact. What led you to start this?
A: Refugees from Uganda who have been forced to flee their homes have faced problems of extreme malnourishment, especially women and children. We wanted to empower them to grow their own food and vegetables, to help them generate income to buy seeds and continue to distribute them. Every refugee has a right to land and we wanted to help them set up their household. The funding provided from the World Food Programme was $3.6USD per month to cover all basic needs. But, through growing of vegetables like mushrooms which take less than a month to grow and can thrive in agricultural waste and produce more yield, these people are able to generate around $50 USD per month.
Q: Tell me about the areas the Foundation works in and your site analysis, observation and design processes.
A: We are working across sites in Uganda, refugee camps in Kenya as well as Tanzania. The land in each of these countries is different and we are using the principles of permaculture to regenerate soil to produce compost and yields.
Our work in site analysis, observation and design is guided by Principle 4 – the acceptance of feedback. We also look at ethics and sustainability and consider several questions. We ask: What does the land look like now and what does it need? Where does the water come from and where does it go? How does the soil look? What grasses are present and what are they missing? What do we plant and when do we plant it? Where is the best place to plant it?
Timing is important for us. From May until August, it will not rain, so what we plant must be adaptable to these weather conditions.
Q: What are the main challenges you face and how can external stakeholders support you in overcoming them?
A: Permaculture is an inclusive business, and we must work in collaboration, rather than competition. We need skills to learn from other people and from consultants. The main thing is we need people with experience and knowledge, not just funds to support us.
Other challenges lie in the fact that the land we use belongs to the Government, and sometimes they demolish everything. We ask how can we reach more people? As the World Food Programme has stopped giving, refugees in camps who have been there for over 10 years are going to Kenya and to the desert with a fear of no food. How can we help these people eat? This is an Africa-wide challenge. Climate change is affecting everyone, and we all need to carry the same umbrella.
Q: Many countries in the west are fighting to keep refugees out of their countries. Why should they rethink this?
A: I have been a refugee for most of my life. It’s important that people understand this is not a personal wish. Nobody wants to become a refugee.
There is value in the knowledge of refugees. We have a major contribution to the development of host countries as well as our country of origin. It is important to remember we are all humans and need the same things.
Written with special thanks to Florence, Jonnie, Rachel and the entire team at Lush for making the trip so memorable and energising.
To follow the work of the prize recipients, you can read more about the Lush Spring Prize here.
You can view a short video and some highlights via Sustainable & Social on Instagram.
To minimise and be mindful of our footprint whilst travelling – we stayed in Berlin’s Lulu Guldsmen Hotel, an establishment focused on responsible hospitality. From minimising food waste to certified organic products, a responsible purchasing policy and simple touches like no kettles/refrigerators in rooms, they are working to encourage sustainable travel behaviours. You can read more about the Guldsmen hotels here and they have hotels across the world in Bali, Copenhagen, Norway, Iceland and France!
