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(man) Over the last 40-odd years, I've seen the village rapidly declining.
(woman 1) People in Howey are feeling like
there's no services focal point left for them here.
Particularly with young people, there's nothing to keep people here.
(woman 2) It was a whole little community
in its own right with everybody.
It makes me very angry when I find it all falling apart.
But now we've got the chance to do something with it again
and put it back as it was and even better.
(man) I grew up in the village of Howey. We always had plenty to do.
We had a school here, we had youth clubs,
we had carnivals, we had sports days,
we had some good businesses in the village.
Over the years, I've seen it in decline.
(woman 1) Back in the summer, the village school here closed down.
The impact that's had on this village has been huge.
When those facilities are lost, villages lose their focus,
they lose the connections between people.
What the Ashfield Community Enterprise would like to do
if we are lucky enough to win the Big Lottery Fund Village SOS grant
is to actually buy a small horticultural site on the edge of Howey
which comprises about seven and a half acres,
and has the fantastic advantage
that it's already got Soil Association accreditation.
It's owned by a local organisation
who supported employment for people with learning disabilities.
Our aim is to revitalise that site, and use it as a hub
for local people to come and engage in community gardening, learn new skills.
We had support workers here.
You could come down when they were here.
But when they stopped coming, we weren't allowed to any more.
Gardening was one of the few skills I'd got left.
That meant I lost that, because where I live, you can't dig your garden up.
You're not allowed to because I live on a caravan park.
Here, you can, which makes it such a good site.
(Jude) The focus of what we're going to do
is around growing organic food.
Somebody from the local community can then make a business out of that.
The brilliant result we have from our market research is that to date,
we've got around £845 a week in promissory orders
for fruit and veg that are produced locally, organically,
at the Ashfield site.
We know the customers are out there.
We just need to get on that site and get growing things.
Our vision is a whole series of little micro-businesses
that are using the produce and the facilities at Ashfield.
It's also going to help people like me
who can't work, who won't get employment,
but we can come down here and work within our own abilities,
which is so much more empowering than just sitting at home.
(Jude) You hear a lot about we need to get greener,
we want to make sure that there is enough food
for people to eat in the future.
What we are saying is we're not going to wait for the government to help us.
With the help of the Big Lottery Fund, we'll do it ourselves.