RIVER Bourne Community Farm opened a new education facility at the farm’s annual open day. The mini enterprise farm was built with the help of employees from the global logistics company DHL and will enable the farm’s BTEC students to run their own small mixed farm.

Students will be involved in activities including sowing seeds and raising the young animals as well as the sale of produce and the financial monitoring of profit and loss.

The profit generated by the students will be invested in further facilities on the mini farm.

The mini enterprise farm was funded by a significant grant from Transform It, a new £200,000 programme from the DHL UK Foundation which provides grants to charities and not-for-profit organisations to improve community facilities across the country, particularly benefitting children and young people.

Volunteers from the DHL finance team worked alongside local community volunteers to complete the mini farm in time for the next academic year and were rewarded for their efforts at the DHL internal awards ceremony when they were presented with the Living Responsibility Award for work in the community. Ben Parker, farm chairman, said: “We are very grateful to the DHL UK Foundation and the DHL Finance Team for their support with this project and are looking forward to seeing schools fully utilising the new facilities from September 2014.

“Our students will be able to plant and raise vegetables and herbs for sale in the farm shop, look after a range of small animals, sell rare breed hens eggs, raise guinea fowl for sale at Christmas and generally take part in all the animal and plant husbandry duties associated with a full size farm.” James Gill from DHL added: “It has been a very rewarding journey so far, the finance team have found it a very worthwhile experience, the opportunities it will give to the students and children from the local area to benefit from the project has given everyone involved a real sense of achievement, and we hope they are able to maximise a real learning opportunity and further develop themselves.”