Our mission is to provide meaningful daily experiences for young adults with disabilities in a caring, productive environment. Using our garden to teach horticultural skills and provide horticultural therapy, we strive to increase the opportunities for disabled young adults to participate in the wider community.
Our philosophy is simple: Our society benefits from inclusion of all individuals, because inclusion leads to recognition of the value that each of us, with or without disabilities, brings to our community.
At Tavon Center, we focus on developing individual skills that may be put to use in a workplace environment. We welcome recent high-school graduates along with other young adults who could benefit from continued structured vocational assistance. Our program has a heavy focus on gardening and the outdoors, and will educate our clients about growing, harvesting, and selling vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Clients will learn about growing and producing products, readying them for market and finally selling them at the local farmer’s market. The funds from this grant will be used toward our horticultural therapy program.
By basing our program in horticultural therapy, we have an area of focus for teaching vocational skills. While our daily activities will include other types of therapy and development of life skills, we believe the connection to nature provides a grounding factor that is simply not present in programs based solely indoors.