The Munster Indian Cultural Association

FOODPRINT - The goal with FoodPrint is give the community autonomy and help to challenge current food practices by reducing carbon emissions and to encourage farm to table (local grown food) with access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. The MICA community participation in FOODPRINT can lead to understanding the effects our collective food choices have on the environment.

Citizens Innovation Hub. Invited 10 members including MICA, Kevin Wallace, Deirdre McMahon and Fab Lab’s Ger Walsh. Mapping Workshop developing community, building relationships, and examining complex citizenship within Irish culture and ecology. Relationships between people and land are intertwined: care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. A land ethic is a moral code of conduct that grows out of these interconnected caring relationships. A Very specific behavioural change made by the group was their outlook and planning on large scale events engaging their community.

CanavanPower presented the findings of 3 care families who shopped with the artists and calculated their FoodPrint using the workbook, they then took part in another workshop with the core group to brainstorm ideas around local food production and buying that could lower the Footprint of items they are buying. We spoke candidly about the struggle with school lunches, baby food, and family dinners.. we brainstormed suggestions and ideas for working together to solve these problems and all the while focusing on keeping local at the heart of our buying power of 500+ families. Presenting the findings to everyone at the festival was really fantastic, and there were so many positive comments, and huge interest in taking part. We shared seeds having been gathered from seed savers for winter crops, we shared the FoodPrint workbook and how to use it, and we also shared the community connections the core group had made with the broader community. This was important in allowing the wider community to feel as if they too could take part in the changes being made, and fulfilled MICA's "Share and Care" ethos.

Visit to Seed Savers. The core group, on a tour of the property, were introduced to an age-old tradition of collecting and conserving seeds. These seeds collected and purchased were later disseminated to the broader group during the Oman Festival.

New Leaf Urban Farmers with Kevin Wallace MICA’s introduction to Organic Farming methods and Soil Regeneration. The enthusiasm from the group meant that each workshop and site visit was very exciting and enriching. Sharing viewpoints and meeting them on their time was what made them feel most comfortable and heard in the engagement. We set out as a a collaboration to challenge food practices, encourage farm to table, address issues around processing to disposal and reduce carbon emissions with access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. The group was really open to these ideas with big dreams for continuing the topics and legacy of the work they started. The project was about impact and butterfly effect, with 400+ families making small food changes around decarbonisation and sustainability. This project also connected them into a broader Irish community, as an expat community MICA, would generally engage with themselves as they are very large, but with the input from the site visits and Artists, MICA is now making stronger connections within Limerick based communities to grow sustainable roots and support infrastructure.