What does our charity do?

In a nutshell…

The Papillon Project is an energetic and enterprising educational charity that promotes sustainable living and environmental awareness for young people. It's our continued privilege to work with secondary schools, sixth-form colleges and pupil referral units in Norfolk to inspire young people to grow their own food for themselves and their local community. It is our very dedicated mission to help rehearse the next generation to know how to grow their own food so we can all start to live in a world that is greener and far more sustainable. Ultimately, our charitable work is about helping young people to feel more confident about themselves.

For more information about what our charity's does, please click here.

Teaching valuable life skills

Our mission is achieved by creating and developing school allotments using mainly recycled, reclaimed and upcyclable (creative reuse) materials. We believe a school allotment should be a ‘permanent place of inspirational learning’ and all secondary schools and sixth-form colleges should have one! We passionately believe that a school allotment provides the most incredible opportunities for crucial and highly valuable life skills to be taught and imparted to young people. In many respects, we see a school allotment as a learning facility just as a sports hall or a drama studio is!

Far more than just growing food!

Improving mental health: Our charitable work is not just about promoting food growing! Having a school allotment really is the perfect place for young people to enjoy some temporary escapism from school books and exam pressures. It's certainly been proven that being outside, gardening and working with nature is extremely good for our mental wellbeing. We believe the happier young people are, the better learners they become.

Engaging local communities: The Papillon Project actively works with the surrounding communities of schools and colleges across Norfolk to positively engage with them and connect them to their local school/college. In our eyes, and from good experience, a school allotment serves as a ‘social connective hub’ to bring people together. From good experience, we believe that the key to a successful school allotment lies with having a strong bond with local people.

Credit: Holly Maughan (Kings' Lynn Academy) 

Making it all sustainable!

The Papillon Project recognises that teaching is a very busy and time consuming profession and so running a school allotment can be a real challenge and sometimes daunting. As a charity we support teachers to lead their school allotment projects, from supporting lunchtime sessions to building a school allotment from scratch or for free supportive advice, our charity is here to make school allotmenting far more achievable and sustainable for teachers themselves.

Along with engaging with a school’s local community, our biggest contribution to making school allotmenting sustainable is to actively help a school to ‘grow its own help’ so that a ‘shared responsibility’ is forged from amongst students, parents, staff and local people. One person doing everything is not sustainable, but a collective responsibility certainly works!

Credit: Jason Bye (2018)