Launched in 2017, the Lush Spring Prize is now in its fourth year of celebrating and awarding prizes to groups working toward eco-social regeneration. It is a joint venture between Lush Cosmetics and Ethical Consumer, and has distributed more than £600,000 to date.
It was set up to support ‘regenerative’ projects – those that go beyond sustainability by taking holistic approaches to building the health of ecology, economy and social systems.
In 2021 Be The Earth was invited to co-fund and co-create a new category: The Ancient and Indigenous Knowledge Award.
"The funding for the 2021 event and the Spring Prize’s regular four categories (Influence, Established, Young and Intentional awards) is generated by the commitment of the Lush business as a whole. We are grateful to all those who have made this possible - from the Lush founders and Re:Fund team to those working in the fields, factories, shops and offices.
We are also grateful to Be The Earth Foundation and Abundant Earth Foundation who have partnered with the Spring Prize to add two new collaborative prizes: The Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award and the The Youth In Permaculture Prize. We hope this sets a trend for future years where the Spring Prize welcomes further collaborative prizes; enabling us to move closer to our vision of supporting as many applicants as possible."
The judging panel offered us the opportunity to get to know the amazing work of the shortlisted groups and brilliant minds of the judges, selected from various grassroots backgrounds to work on the seemingly impossible mission of selecting the most aligned applicants.
The Award Recipients in 2021
Associação Centro de Cultura Sabuká Kariri Xocó (Brazil)
The Kariri-Xocó sleep and wake up fighting for their existence. Within their territory is a unique biome, the meeting of the Caatinga – the only exclusively Brazilian biome – with the Atlantic Forest. Their village is located on the banks of the Opará, the São Francisco River in Brazil. Yet, even so, their lands and plants are dry, because the river suffers.
The Centro de Cultura Sabuká Kariri-Xocó was born with the mission of fighting for the preservation of their life and that of all the beings that live there. It gathers children, young people and elders to be together, as their ancestors did. In addition to nurturing culture, they plant community gardens, harvest and feed themselves in groups of up to 100 people a day, and hold their Torés, dialogues, games, football and other activities.
They dream of taking back ancestral memory and guaranteeing food, collective work, union and the strengthening of their culture. With this project they see a great possibility of survival for their ethnic group and village. It provides the hope of resistance for their people.
The Marginalised Mirror (Namibia)
The Marginalised Mirror will provide knowledge sharing around responsible investments in agriculture and food systems for the marginalised Ovazemba communities in Namibia to produce their own organic food through regenerative agriculture for resilience to climatic instability.
The current and future impact of COVID-19 on the Ovazemba Indigenous community, compounded by the harsh reality of Namibia’s nationwide economic crisis, restricted movements, and recurring droughts, is immeasurable. The community depends on the production of crops and livestock. The droughts have resulted in the loss of sources of dairy products and traditional crops normally planted during the rainy season. With the restricted movement of people due to COVID-19 regulations, pastoralists are unable to head livestock to neighbouring countries with better rainfall like Angola for better grazing pastures.
The project will provide training on crop production under an irrigation system to produce food and fodder for human and livestock production and sell the surplus for income generation. They aim to support a community-based irrigation project managed by Indigenous Ovazemba community members who will run the project sustainably for themselves and future generations.
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