By Tom Cockcroft (24), Director of FungALL – who build urban farms where they grow mushrooms using food waste to provide nutritious food for communities.
How would you describe yourself in three words or a sentence?
Smiley, motivated, energetic
Who is your role model and why?
I never really had a role model growing up, but I would say that in my adult life it would be my good friend and Director of Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD), Mike Hodson. He really inspired me to follow a life in sustainable farming after I played a big part in establishing Platt Fields Market Garden alongside him and the rest of the MUD team. This showed me how powerful community-led projects can be in fostering community spirit and the impact you can have on people and space through hard work and initiative.
What inspired you to start the project?
A love for building community and the knowledge that creating sustainable, climate resilient farming systems is going to play a key part in preparing our society for the impacts of climate change.
Why is your project important?
Due to the impacts of climate change and our un-sustainable farming system enhancing the damage to our land and soil, we need climate resilient farming and communities. Our project and farming system offer this; providing a viable solution to community-led farming that not only has minimal impact on our environment, but also contributes positively to our eco-system by ‘healing’ soil through myco-remediation and converting waste into food.
Has your project changed someone’s life? Tell us about it.
I would like to think we are changing people lives on a daily / regular basis, by providing people with lifelong skills to grow their own food and start similar projects.
What do you love doing when you are not working on your project?
Alongside this, I work freelance in events setting up events across the UK and Europe, so I don’t get a lot of free time. But if I do, I volunteer regularly at community gardens across Manchester, and I love going on long bike rides or spending time with my nephew.
Any tips for a young person starting their own project?
Don’t be afraid and don’t get disheartened when you get things wrong. You will get things wrong over and over again, they aren’t failures, just lessons.
It will be very tough to do something like this completely on your own, although it is possible, it will be stressful; finding a team of people that you trust is super important. Even if it is someone that you can call to rant about what’s going on or simply just to bounce ideas off to double check what you are doing is right, provides you with some comfort and reassurance.
Be careful of burnout; projects like this can become quite addictive because what you are doing is so fulfilling and helping lots of people; it’s easy to put everyone else and the project before your own well-being. You need to be mindful of your own body and mind, give yourself self-care time, whatever that might look like.
What do you think you will be doing in five years’ time?
I have absolutely no idea… I like to try and stay present and not get too bogged down with what the future holds. The me five years from now will be a completely different person with a completely new set of experiences to learn from. I’ll let him make that call!
Young people, such as Tom Cockcroft, are transforming communities into safer, more sustainable and more inclusive places to live, powered by the £4.5m Young Gamechangers Fund from Co-op, the Co-op Foundation and the #iwill Fund. The fund is delivered by Global Fund for Children and Restless Development.
