After thorough preparation and planning, residents and employees with special needs are cultivating and planting the first fields at the agricultural section of ADI’s newly founded accessible farm, an innovative project to tap agricultural work by growing local produce and nurturing farm animals as a means of educating, advancing and integrating people with special needs.
Together with Holland’s Eleven Floawers Foundation, the leADIng model for education and social inclusion of people with special needs through agriculture, ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran has brought the innovative program to Israel, creating a structural plan for the establishment of rehabilitative agricultural schools throughout the country. The schools will train and empower people with disabilities to work in gardening and all areas of agriculture, including farming, production and distribution of produce, animal care and more. Simultaneously, local farmers adopting the model will receive training and guidance for successful implementation of the novel program.
ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran’s new agricultural farm, the prototype on which future farms will be based, sits on eight dunams of land and will include 24 participants with disabilities in addition to the 20 people already working in rehabilitative gardening at the Negev village.
Utilizing the pleasant early-morning hours, village gardening staff launched the farm’s first large-scale planting operation, working in the fields and in the greenhouse to sow the first seeds of the new agricultural project.
We look forward to watching the seeds grow and blossom as ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran’s accessible agricultural farm takes root, advancing yet another innovative program for the benefit and empowerment of people with disabilities nationwide.
