£1 million milestone reached with latest round of Lush Spring Prize funding for environmental and social regeneration
£236,000 has been awarded to 17 groups as part of the Lush Spring Prize 2023, celebrating the efforts of regenerative practitioners across the globe. More than £1 million has now been awarded through the Spring Prize since its inception in 2017.
Lush Spring Prize 2023 announces 17 prize recipients
Lush Spring Prize 2023 prize recipients were announced as part of a celebratory in-person event held in Berlin, Germany. This will be the first time the event has been held outside of the UK with prize recipients, judges, Lush staff, press and other guests. At least 14 different countries and five continents are represented. This includes three countries never before
represented among Spring Prize recipients – Colombia, Nepal and Madagascar.
The Event
The 2023 Spring Prize event seeks to celebrate the work of prize recipients, whilst creating spaces for peer learning, where groups can share effective practice with one another and network in a safe and supportive space. The 2023 Spring Prize recipients were publicly announced during a prize ceremony hosted on the evening of 23 May 2023. The event was hosted in partnership with a Lush Socials event, which aims to bring together the Lush
community to network and celebrate the company’s journey in leaving the world lusher.
The 2023 Prize Recipients
All 17 projects use a range of approaches that respond to global challenges and the ripple effects that are experienced locally e.g. the climate emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine’s impact in much of the Global South.
Despite their different contexts and the diverse focus of their projects, all prize recipients share a common goal in addressing challenges holistically and regeneratively.
Many of the projects are led and shaped by the communities they serve. For example, there are multiple indigenous, refugee and farmer-led organisations.
The difficult decision of which projects should receive prizes is made via a deliberative process by the Spring Prize judging panel. This panel is made up of people drawn from a diverse range of movements that represent regenerative design, permaculture design, food sovereignty, transition towns, biomimicry, eco-village networks and various social justice movements. Each prize cycle a ‘Lush Customer Judge’ and ‘Lush Staff Judge’ are also selected to act as additional independent members of the judging panel. You can read more about the judges here: Spring Prize Judging Panel.
“When I was given the document to read over all the applications, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of beauty, of knowledge, of passion… Just to have such an amazing collective of humans who were all doing such amazing things around the world”
-Jessielee Pearce, Spring Prize staff judge, 2023
The 2023 prizes are awarded across six categories: Intentional, Young, Established and Influence Awards, the Permaculture Magazine Award (run in partnership with Permaculture Magazine) and the Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award (run in partnership with Be The Earth Foundation); investing more than £225,000 in regenerative work.
The 17 prize recipients of the 2023 LUSH Spring Prize are:
Influence Projects Award
European Coordination Via Campesina (Europe)
Rawa Fund (Palestine)
Established Projects Award
Himalayan Permaculture Centre (Nepal)
Jupago Kreká Collective (Brazil)
Young Projects Award
Cooperativa Agropecuaria de Servicios Tonanzintlalli (Nicaragua)
Organización Waorani de Pastaza (OWAP) (Ecuador)
Rwamwanja Rural Foundation (Uganda)
International Projects Award
Beejvan (India)
Taniala Regenerative Camp (Madagascar)
teKio (Mexico)
Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award
Ashiniawka – Sapara Women’s Association (Ecuador)
Instituto Janeraka (Brazil)
Resguardo Indígena Musu Runakuna (Colombia)
Permaculture Magazine Award
Sol Haven (UK)
Tejiendo Futuros ONG (Guatemala)
Unidos Social Innovation Centre (Uganda)
Project profiles
Information about all 2023 Spring Prize recipients (and the shortlist) can be found on the Spring Prize website.
Examples of this year’s awarded projects include:
Himalayan Permaculture Centre (Nepal) – Established Award
Himalayan Permaculture Centre (HPC) is a grass-roots, permaculture-led NGO operating in remote, poor, and resource-depleted farming communities in Western Nepal. It is run by farmers from Surkhet and Humla districts.
With local communities across 31 villages, HPC runs regenerative projects with a unique cross-sector approach, integrating food security and sovereignty, health, education, livelihoods and capacity building. The result is abundant villages embracing a variety of livelihoods, culture and biodiversity, where people are not forced to leave because of poverty.
Rawa Fund (Palestine) – Influence Award
Rawa works to advocate for and strengthen an emancipatory, resilient Palestinian grassroots social ecosystem. Envisioning a liberated, self-determined, just, and participatory society, Rawa sees intersectional grassroots communities as the key anchors for Palestinian people to access
power, share resources, and uphold collective well-being and abundance.
Rawa’s pilot participatory grantmaking and holistic support model launched in 2018. Over 60 grants have been awarded to grassroots community-based initiatives across the West Bank, Jerusalem, 48 areas, and Gaza.
Cooperativa Agropecuaria de Servicios Tonanzintlalli (Nicaragua)– Young Award
Cooperativa Tonanzintlalli was founded by 23 indigenous Matagalpa women to cultivate and add value to organic regenerative coffee grown under the tree canopy, in right-relationship with the land and the people in the community.
Through this project, the women are seeking to recover, promote, and defend their ecological and cultural indigenous knowledge, and their economic and political self-determination. Tonanzintlalli means Sacred Mother Earth. The cooperative is committed to upholding the rights of our Mother Earth and our sacred relationship with her and all her creatures.
Taniala Regenerative Camp (Madagascar) – Intentional Award
The Taniala organisation derives its name from two Malagasy words: “Tany” which means both “earth” and “soil”; and “Ala” which means “forest”.
The Taniala Regenerative Camp promotes regenerative land use practices in Madagascar that are locally adapted, accessible and sustainable. It aims to support the forest to regenerate through sustainable agriculture techniques, and to bequeath living soil to future generations in Madagascar. The first Regenerative Camp was set up in 2022 in Lambokely, a village where migrants live after fleeing famine and drought. ‘Slash-and-burn’ cultivation is common and as a result, only 56% of forest cover remains today. Taniala aims to set up more Regenerative Camps to promote more sustainable practices in other sites.
Instituto Janeraka (Brazil) – Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award (in collaboration with Be The Earth Foundation)
The Janeraka Institute was born in the Amazon region, Altamira, from the Awaete ancestry in the resistance of a population with less than 50 years of contact with the global society.
Since then, the Awaete population has faced numerous psychosocial and ecological challenges, such as the consequences of genocide and ethnocide since the first contact. These challenges have only increased with the construction of hydroelectric power-plants and mining activities;
culminating in some of the worst deforestation in the world and threatening the existence of the water, peoples, land and forest, – in the region and around the planet.
Sol Haven (UK) – Permaculture Magazine Award (In collaboration with Permaculture Magazine)
Community Interest Company Sol Haven started in January 2018, drawing on the founders’ shared passion for sustainable agriculture and personal experiences of homelessness.
Its vision is to create a blueprint for sustainable permaculture care hubs across the UK that are a showcase for rural arts and crafts while providing a sustainable local source of food. More widely, the project seeks to explore, develop and create a practical environment that can be used to determine a better today and brighter tomorrow.
What is the LUSH Spring Prize?
The LUSH Spring Prize is a joint venture between LUSH Cosmetics and Ethical Consumer and is now in its fifth prize cycle, having started in 2017. At the end of the 2023 prize cycle, the Spring Prize will have distributed more than £1 million to regenerative projects worldwide.
The LUSH Spring Prize 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. It seeks to support those who are leaving the world lusher than they found it, and are
actively restoring all the systems they are part of.
By supporting regenerative projects the Spring Prize hopes to raise the profile of the movement as a whole to inspire more individuals, groups, communities, funders, media platforms and businesses to start engaging with regenerative processes.
2023 Collaborative Awards
Be The Earth Foundation and Permaculture Magazine have partnered with the 2023 Lush Spring Prize to add two collaborative prizes: The Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award for the second year running and the Permaculture Magazine Award. Both are separately funded or co-funded and have their own judging panel.
Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award
Run in partnership with Be The Earth Foundation, this award seeks to recognise and celebrate ancient knowledge and wisdom. In a world shaped by (historic and current) oppressive colonial and patriarchal structures, this award honours the necessity and relevance of traditional and ecological knowledge, as well as ancestral and indigenous nature-based practices. Prize recipients will share an amount of £21,000, provided by Be The Earth Foundation and LUSH.
Permaculture Magazine Award
Run in collaboration with the Permaculture Magazine, this award is for individuals, communities, businesses, groups and organisations that can demonstrate inspirational permaculture work over three years or more. Prize recipients will share an amount of £15,000. It is looking for permaculture projects that are regenerating damaged land; enhancing habitat and biodiversity; helping people to gain practical and community skills; adding value to produce and developing local economies; building community, creating social glue and greater economic resilience; modelling new ways of cooperating and new cultural paradigms.
Other support
Alongside the peer-to-peer learning event and prize ceremony, shortlisted groups and prize recipients often continue their relationship with Lush, Ethical Consumer, media partners and fellow regenerative projects in other ways. For example, regenerative farming communities have sold surplus produce to Lush to use in their products; nRhythm and LUSH have offered 25 subsidised places on nRhythm’s 2023 Regenerative Design Labs; a regional event was held in East Africa to support further networking and skill sharing amongst projects, and some projects have written articles for Ethical Consumer Magazine. A couple of new collaborative projects have also emerged over the years: Regenerosity and Re-Alliance.
Regenerosity
Regenerosity is a partnership between the Lush Spring Prize and the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s (BFI) Fuller Challenge, and other partners. It’s driven by the inspiration of seeing the thousands of applicants from across the world doing the planet’s most important work of regeneration. Regenerosity welcomes all shortlisted Spring Prize applicants, with their consent, into a network that aims to source further funding and resourcing for them. Regenerosity connects regenerative projects to funders, and also flows funds through from generous donors. In doing so, it aims to move as much capital as possible over the next ten crucial years in support of the regenerative movement.
For more information, visit www.regenerosity.world
Re-Alliance
Re-Alliance is a network of regenerative practitioners working in the humanitarian and development sectors. Re-Alliance asks the question, how can we create resilience and abundance, even in times of crisis? The organisation acts as a network convener for grassroots practitioners, and also has been contracted by several humanitarian agencies to host
Permaculture and Regeneration capacity building programmes, and peer-to-peer learning sessions.
For more information, visit www.re-alliance.org
notes to editors
Website: www.springprize.org (Contains descriptions of and links to all prize recipients and all shortlisted projects).
Comms Pack. This contains translated press releases, social media resources, judges quotes and images.
Who we are:
Lush
The Prize is funded by Lush, a campaigning company with over 900 shops spanning 48 countries. Lush has provided funding for regenerative projects through grant programmes like the Re:Fund (Regeneration Fund) since 2010.
Ethical Consumer
The Prize is coordinated by Ethical Consumer, a non-profit multi-stakeholder co-operative based in Manchester, UK. Ethical Consumer’s research and publishing seeks to challenge corporate mis-power and supports consumer power to generate positive impacts for the environment, people, animals and society.
Contact details:
Telephone: 0161 226 2929
Email: [email protected]
Anna Clayton: [email protected]
Francesca de la Torre: [email protected]
James Atherton: [email protected]
Jonnie Hatfield: [email protected]
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