Crisis Response Gardens - Lemon Tree Trust

CRG: Adding Logos to a Community Garden Kit.

CRG: Individual Household, Crisis Response Garden

CRG: Wheel Barrow Gardens

CRG: Assembled Kits in Domiz Camp, Iraq ready for Syria

CRG: Garden Kits for transporting to Syria

CRG: Delivery in Syria to Liberated areas

Working in partnership with Lush and Mercy Hands we are employing refugees in Domiz Camp, Iraq to help design and fabricate emergency growing kits for crisis-affected areas in Iraq and Syria

The concept of the Crisis Response Garden kits is simple: deliver all the tools and seeds required to start growing food to help newly arrived refugee families begin food gardening as soon as possible in newly established camps or to residents in crisis affected urban areas. The kits range from a single household garden, to a large community garden including a wheelbarrow and then a large crate for a communal garden.

Our livelihood strategy involved helping to set up a workers cooperative in Domiz Camp, Iraq, where refugees would help design and construct 1,200 kits. Lemon Tree Trust then purchases these kits from refugees helping to develop a business strategy beyond charitable funding. Each kit has an image of hope for the refugee in Syria, hand embroidered onto the bags by a group of skilled women in Domiz. Initial funding has been provided by Lush, with the collection and distribution in Mosul, Iraq and Amude, Syria being facilitated by Mercy Hands, a partner NGO. We are working with them to pilot and evaluate the use of these kits and to determine which households and community groups want to grow.

We aim that this project also becomes a self-contained business for families in Domiz Camp, who are able to build on the initial funding by obtaining further orders from other NGOs and humanitarian organisations.