Mr Michael Kelly

Social Entrepreneur, Michael Kelly is a freelance writer, bestselling author, broadcaster and founder of GIY (Grow It Yourself), a not-for-profit organisation that aims to inspire people to grow their own food and give them the skills they need to do so successfully. 

Following his graduation from the University of Limerick in 1996 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Studies (Marketing), Michael spent a decade working in the I.T. industry in Dublin, before relocating back to his hometown of Dunmore East, Co Waterford. GIY was founded in 2008 after Michael  and his wife, who had been growing their own food for about five years, went in search of a local food growers group so that they could learn from some real experts and get to know other like-minded folk in the area. Realising there was no such group – and in his own words “being a sucker for a hare-brained project” - Michael decided to set one up. When the first GIY group was set up in Waterford, over 100 people showed up at the first meeting. Today, the GIY Waterford group continues to meet monthly in the city. Not long afterward, other GIY groups were formed in neighbouring towns.  Michael and his partner Dave Curran spent nearly two years driving around Ireland in a battered old GIY-mobile, starting GIY groups in towns from Navan to Nenagh, Belfast to Bantry, Limerick to Lucan. GIY has also launched in Australia and the UK. So an idea that started local and went regional, then national, has now also gone international. From the outset, Michael and his team have been on a mission to educate people about the joys and benefits of growing your own. Michael adds “Things have got a little more sophisticated since, but the ethos of GIY remains the same - we're all about bringing people together so that they can grow their own food more successfully.” 

The challenge, as Michael saw it, “was to do with the way the food chain operates in Ireland which has profound implications for our health, environment, and economy. I decided that something needed to be done to change things for the next generation.” He adds “We had this bizarre situation in Ireland where we are producing enough food to feed 7 times our population and yet we were importing so much food. One day, it struck me as I was in an Irish supermarket buying Chinese garlic, and I thought, surely it was possible to grow garlic in Ireland instead of flying it across the world?” This garlic moment led to us setting up the first branch of GIY (Grow It Yourself) in Waterford, with a mission to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to grow some of their own food as a path to a healthier, happier and more sustainable life. Since then, the project has grown and the impact is such that there are over 500,000 GIY growers around Ireland now. GIY also supported over 250,000 children in 8,000 schools to grow their own food for the very first time last year. 

A major development for GIY has been the establishment of a food education centre – GROW HQ. After raising more than €1 million, GIY HQ opened its doors in Waterford city in September 2016 and it includes a shop, cookery demonstration room and a café where the menu is mostly organic, largely plant-based, strictly seasonal and very creative, with all the vegetables served grown by the GIY HQ Head Grower and his team. 

In a further attempt to break down the barriers of where food is grown, cooked and eaten, Michael has written three books on food and self-sufficiency, including GROW COOK EAT (2014) which was a winner in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. RTE commissioned a TV series of the same name which was broadcast in 2018 with Michael and GIY Head of Community Development, Karen O'Donohoe (fellow UL alumna) as co-presenters. 

Michael is an Ashoka Fellow, a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland awardee and a recipient of the inaugural 2010 Arthur Guinness Fund. He is also a member of the TASTE Council of Ireland. In demand as an informed and impassioned speaker on food issues, self-sufficiency, sustainability and growing your own he has written columns on food and health for The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and Food & Wine Magazine. 

Michael is married to UL classmate, Eilish Somers BBS ’96 and the couple live with their children (“two little GIYers”) and an ever-expanding coterie of farm animals in Dunmore East.