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PRESS RELEASE (for immediate release) 14th June 2011
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 Pic - completed seating area. Volunteers are celebrating the completion of a new outdoor café seating area at the award winning Swansea Community Farm in Fforestfach Swansea. They have worked alongside experienced trainers and Farm staff to complete the project ready for the summer, so that visitors to the Farm can enjoy a cuppa from the Farm’s cafe in comfort. “ It’s been an amazing project – up to 30 volunteers have put in over 900 hours of work and the quality of the work is well up to contractor standards, even though most of the volunteers had little or no experience of this type of work beforehand. It’s been a real labour of love!” commented Farm Education & Sustainability Manager, Phil Budd, who oversaw completion of the project. Over 50 metres of tarmac path were also completed, making the Farm fully accessible to all, and over 100m of surfaced path and steps were completed to open up access to neighbouring woodland. “The work underpins our commitment to both the environment and people – we’ve used locally sourced and certified timber, ‘Margam Slag’ for the path foundations and even a recycled plastic fence and we’ve continued our tradition of ‘on the job’ training for the volunteers who get the chance to pick up new skills and develop confidence in their own abilities.” continued Phill/Mr.Budd. Kris Eakins, 27, and on a six month Future Jobs Fund placement at the Farm said, “I’ve learnt so much, I was a total novice and have tried step and path building, bench and table construction, but what really gripped was the stone walling – the finished thing may look simple but there’s a lot to it.” This was echoed by Martyn Lysandraou (27) an unemployed volunteer and with the Farm since January, “It was great working alongside Andy (the trainer), I learned so much. After the initial training we were given real responsibility to finish the job off ourselves, which I really enjoyed and it was great working with the other volunteers.” pic - at the start of building. The package of grounds improvements was supported through the Welsh Government Swansea Regeneration Area Programme with a grant of over £25,000. “Getting the money to support our work with volunteers in improving the Farm is an ongoing task and the next project we want the volunteers to have a go at is completing our workshop building, which has been unfinished since 2005 and that’s where your readers can help us.” Said Mr. Budd
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