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Kindling will be promoting a new range of organic, local and seasonal soups at Brookburn Primary School's Summer Fete on Saturday 3rd July (2010).

The soups are made of organic and local vegetables grown at Glebelands Organic Growers (just three miles away); Moss Brook Growers; Dunham Massey Organics and the Rigby's organic farm in Warrington. All the vegetables are grown within thirty miles of Manchester and dry ingredients (pulses, beans and grains) have been sourced as close as possible and within Europe.

Amateur historians from across Greater Manchester are benefiting from a number of training workshops in preparation for Forgotten Fields: Kindling's food heritage project. A few weeks ago we held an 'ownership & copyright' course. The second workshop (held today: the 14th June 2010) covered oral history techniques and the third will explore how we can collectively evaluate this unique project over the next two years.

After spending a year in Guatemala working with Peace Brigades International: Guatemala, Kindling's Helen and Matt have continued their involvement with the human rights organisation. Twice a year Kindling makes a small contribution to this amazing organisation by hosting PBI Guatemala's training and selection process.

Over a week in June, Kindling will once again be providing logistics: travel, accommodation, catering etc. to enable the training and selection of new volunteers from across the world.

The 4th FeedingManchester took place on the glorious summer evening of  Friday the 25th June 2010 at Hulme Community Garden Centre. The evening combined a networking and social event with the opportunity to discuss how we collectively encourage other organisations to adopt our definition of Sustainable Food and prepare for a possible sustainable food manifesto for Greater Manchester.

Six Community-focused growing projects came together for the first Strong Roots training day in late May (2010) to explore ways of making their food growing projects more sustainable and meet others who share their passion for their communities and are facing similar challenges & opportunities.

Groups who attended included Friends of Platt Fields Park, Manchester Methodist Housing Group, Victoria House (a homeless project), Crumpsall & Cheetham Model Allotment as well as Children and Families Services in Wythensawe.

Forgotten Fields has begun the first of six inter-generational food heritage projects with the communities of Heyes Lane in Timperley, Altrincham.

Until relatively recently, Timperley was a thriving area of market gardens supplying Manchester and beyond with fruit and vegetables. The project will work with people who have first-hand experience and knowledge, including three local residents (in their eighties) who still remember the commercial growing of the famous Timperley Early Rhubarb.

Manchester Fayre has begun experimenting with local produce from regional farmers to create a local and seasonal organic soup for a primary school pupils in South Manchester.

With support from The Kindling Trust and supplied by members of the newly formed Manchester organic growers and buyers collective, the soups will be piloted from September 2010 at Brookburn Primary School in Chorlton.

Kindling's Chris spent a fortnight this summer on a Permaculture Design Course run by the German Permaculture Academy at the award winning Ecovillage of Sieben Linden. Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.

After carrying out MERCi's Sustaining Change audit and receiving support and advice from its team, Kindling has extensively revised its environmental policy into an updated and progressive sustainability policy.

The new policy is broader and more in depth than Kindling's previous policy, but more importantly dovetails with an action plan which sets future actions and targets.

As part of Growing Manchester, Kindling carried out a on Monday 26th April for a select group of community growing projects included Abundance Manchester and Manchester Drugs Service's Waterloo Project. Growing Manchester invited a small number of applicants to attend the pilot to provide feedback and suggestions to help refine and improve the workshop for its official launch on Wednesday 26th May.