The Food Garden Project, Dundalk

The Food Garden Project is a joint project between RehabCare Dundalk and the Simon Community Dundalk.

Background to the project

The ethos of RehabCare and Simon Community is to promote personal development and independence for people from marginalised groupings. The target group are people with an intellectual disability, mental health issues and resettled homeless people, from RehabCare and the Simon Community. Many of the participants have a dual diagnosis i.e. learning difficulties and mental health issues and aged between 30 and 60 years, with an interest in horticulture.

The Food Garden Project is unique bringing these two community groups together to work towards enhancing the participants’ understanding of nutrition, healthy eating and self-sufficiency through growing fruit and vegetables and developing cookery skills. The Food Garden Project’s aim is to support participants to grow, prepare and cook a range of fruit and vegetables throughout the year. There is also an emphasis on transferring these skills to their home life.

Overview of the Project

The aim of the Food Garden Project is to support very marginalised and vulnerable individuals to grow, prepare and cook a range of healthy organic fruit and vegetables throughout the year. There is an emphasis on transferring these skills to their home life. A support worker and a cookery instructor will be employed to assist the participants in learning how to grow produce and prepare healthy meals using the food products harvested from their community garden.

Objectives of the Project include

• To pilot an innovative shared learning project where two marginalised groups of people work together to produce low cost healthy food products that suits their budget 
• To equip participants with the skills to prepare and cook nutritional meals using the food products harvested from the garden
• To provide participants with a good understanding of food safety guidelines and education on nutritionally balanced diets through using their self-produced high quality foods
• To transfer gardening and cooking skills to the participants’ home life
• To promote community integration by supporting the participants to sell excess food products to the local community by setting up a stall in the local farmers market. Revenue from the sale of products will be reinvested in the Food Garden
• To provide a therapeutic stress free environment that will promote positive mental health as many of the participants in the project have suffered from mental illness, brain injury and social disadvantage.

For further information please contact:
Deirdre Quinn, RehabCare, deirdre.quinn@rehabcare.ie.
Also see www.rehab.ie and www.simon.ie