11am-3pm 8 March 2008, Wapping Women's Centre, Philchurch Place, Off Pinchin Street, London E1 1PJ

Wapping Women's Centre and Women's Environmental Network (WEN) are celebrating International Women's Day with a feast.

Women's food growing groups who have transformed disused and often abused land into bountiful vegetable gardens are coming together to share ideas and inspiration. The event, supported by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets is part of International Women's Week in Tower Hamlets.

At least a hundred local women and children will attend along with members of WEN's Taste of a Better Future Network of women's urban food growing groups. The feast will be cooked up by Wapping Women's Centre Business Enterprise Scheme who will talk about how they have recently set up a successful catering company. Lutfun Hussain and Sufia Alam will discuss their achievements in community gardening.

"Food is great at bringing people together," says Caroline Fernandez, Food Project Coordinator at WEN. "These urban growing groups help to break down urban isolation. Women of different cultures, and often without a common language, come to work together, changing barren plots into lush green gardens."

The seed swap is an irresistible draw for gardening enthusiasts who can also learn how to make cosmetics good enough to eat. With an exhibition from Wapping Women's Centre Girls Group there's also a feast for the eyes. A visit to the Centre's innovative garden project shows how hard work and enthusiasm converts a concrete desert into an oasis of organic food production in an inner city estate.

ENDS

For further information or to send a photographer (women only) please contact: Caroline Fernandez, Women's Environmental Network mob: 0787 6777327 tel: 020 7481 9004 email: carofood@gmail.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Wapping Women's Centre is a women only space so please try to send a woman photographer or reporter. The garden tour is open to all at 2.30pm. Sufia Allam Centre Manager Tel 020 7702 0036

2. Women's Environmental Network is the only organisation in the UK working consistently for women and the environment. www.wen.org.uk

3.The 'Taste of a Better Future' Network was set up seven years ago to help ethnic minority women's groups develop organic food growing skills. It recognises that such groups have little access to affordable organic food, particularly traditional fruit and vegetable varieties, or to gardens of their own. Over the last seven years, the 40+ groups in the network have brought new life to some of the most unlikely spaces on housing estates and disused inner city plots. As well as nutritious food, they have enjoyed making new friends, sharing skills and bolstering their communities. The current project, 'Urban Harvest', offers support and training to urban women's growing groups.

4. Urban Harvest is supported by, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Tedworth Trust, Olive Tree Trust , Awards for All and Department for Communities and Local Government.

5.Wapping Women's Centre Business Enterprise Scheme. Contact Minara Begum c/o Wapping Women's Centre tel 020 7702 0036

6. International Women's Week in Tower Hamlets.1-9 March 2008. Women and Work is the theme for this year's celebration of International Women's Week in Tower Hamlets. There are over 35 diverse events across the borough demonstrating the contribution of women to the community. Full details of all the events can be downloaded from the Alternative Arts website, www.alternativearts.co.uk