SMV Charity Supports The Severn Project

Past Master, Tim Ross, lends a helping hand to the Severn Project’s production team.

The Severn Project in Whitchurch is essentially a salad-growing business, started in 2010 with a modest investment and very little experience.

The founder of the business, Steve Glover, was committed to finding employment for people recovering from alcohol and drug misuse, ex-offenders and others who faced barriers to gaining work, such as people with learning difficulties or Asperger syndrome.

This social enterprise and Community Interest Company is now a successful and thriving urban farm employing eight people and supplying over 220 customers in Bristol and throughout the South West. Processing one ton of salad and generating over £6,000 each week, Steve is able to reinvest all profits in order to drive the growth of the business and provide more opportunities to employ individuals from vulnerable groups.

Steve is currently working towards two new sites in Bradford-on-Avon and Bath, a farm shop and cafe at the Whitchurch site, crowd funding and a residential programme to bridge the gap between treatment for substance misuse and the workplace.

Over 350 people to date have benefitted enormously from this life-changing enterprise.

The Severn Project really stood out to SMV’s Charity Committee because it’s a self-sustaining business that strives to empower and upskill individuals who want to work hard and earn an honest living but who, for a variety of reasons, face barriers to finding employment.

A £2,500 grant from SMV was used to purchase machinery, enabling employees who had previously been tasked with picking leaves, to become more closely involved in packaging and production, broadening their skill set and their future prospects.

Steve Glover (right) explains how ten 50m x 8m polytunnels create a controlled environment in which to grow salad leaves.

Steve is currently working towards two new sites in Bradford-on-Avon and Bath.

Which are a farm shop and cafe at the Whitchurch site, they will be crowd funded, with a residential programme to bridge the gap between treatment for substance misuse in the workplace.