Mid-year impact update: Supporting forcibly displaced communities through gardening

As we reach the halfway point of 2025, we are delighted to share some of the impact your support has made possible across our projects. Thanks to your support, our projects are creating meaningful change for forcibly displaced communities, improving access to fresh food, mental wellbeing, and opportunities for connection and belonging through community gardening.

The focus of this update is on the Hêvî Community Garden in the Gawilan refugee camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Over the past six months, the garden has grown in both scale and impact. Expanding growing areas, improving infrastructure and providing more fresh produce for families, it is steadily becoming a hub of nourishment, learning and community connection.

You can view the full mid-year impact update, here.

Our vision

We dream of a world where every refugee camp and community of forced migrants has access to gardens – spaces that bring hope, nourishment and connection.

Our mission

Our work focuses on four key areas:

• Improving mental health and wellbeing
• Community building and women’s empowerment
• Improving local environments
• Independent access to fresh food and food security

We do this by supporting people to build home gardens (both ornamental and productive), supporting communities to establish community gardens, running gardening and cooking competitions, and distributing seeds, seedlings, plants and trees to help ‘green’ camp environments.

Our 2024–2027 strategy

From 2024 to 2027, we are concentrating our efforts on creating greater impact and reaching more communities than ever before:

• Create environments where people, gardening and nature can thrive, enhancing mental health and food security.
• Inspire and support people into gardening, with guidance, tools and encouragement.
• Collaborate with people and organisations to deliver the best possible outcomes.
• Grow the number of people we help so more communities benefit from our work.

Every garden we plant and every person we empower brings us closer to our vision.

Our work and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Our projects contribute directly to several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including:

• SDG 2: Zero Hunger, by increasing food security through local growing.
• SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing, by improving mental health and community resilience through a range of gardening activities.
• SDG 5: Gender Equality, by empowering women and supporting their leadership in community initiatives.
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, by creating greener, more sustainable living environments in refugee and IDP (internally displaced people) camps.
• SDG 15: Life on Land, by promoting biodiversity and environmental restoration through planting and greening.

With gratitude

We are deeply grateful to our supporters, donors and grant givers for their contribution in making this possible. Together, we are planting seeds of change.

You can stay updated by signing up to receive our email newsletter or take the next step and make a donation to help our work grow even further.

Thank you for standing with survivors of war. Together we are bringing beauty, dignity and opportunity to forcibly displaced communities. Thank you for all of your support.