London’s community food-growing groups are being given offered free volunteer support for a day. The Big Dig is being organized by Capital Growth, the campaign to support 2012 new community food-growing spaces in London by the end of 2012. Taking place on Friday the 16th and Saturday, 17th March, Capital Growth is hoping to mobilize thousands of volunteers across London to help community food-growing spaces prepare for the new growing season.

Capital Growth is currently supporting nearly 1,500 spaces across all 32 boroughs of Greater London, a number of which have already registered to take part in the Big Dig. Groups not currently registered with Capital Growth are now being encouraged to get on board so that they can take advantage of the volunteer help that will be available. People interested in volunteering will be able to search for participating spaces and sign up to from Monday, 13th February. Community groups are welcome to register their growing space up until 5pm, 2nd March but the sooner the better if you want volunteers.

Seb Mayfield, from Capital Growth, said: ‘We’ve found that one of the biggest challenges for community growing groups in London is to find enough local volunteer help. The Big Dig is a great way of promoting the spaces to the wider community in the hope that they’ll receive more practical help, both on the day and throughout the growing season.’

Participating groups will not only get the chance of receiving volunteer help on the day but they will also be promoted by Capital Growth and receive marketing materials to help them promote the day locally. Capital Growth is also hoping to offer the loan of a number of tools courtesy of Bulldog Tools. Saturday, 17th March will be the main day for Londoners to get involved with a local space with the 16th aimed at giving corporate teams the opportunity to offer practical help. Companies who are interested in offering a team of employee volunteers are asked to contact seb@sustainweb.org for further information.

For further information about the Big Dig and to register your group please go to Capital Growth.