Tanadam Resilience Garden

Tanadam is part of a broader initiative by Friends by Nature, an NGO with over 20 years of experience advancing community resilience, mental wellbeing, and social integration through agriculture, education, and intergenerational connection.

The project operates within the Wujd Community Garden in the town of Gedera—a long-established urban farm cultivated by older members of the local Ethiopian community. At the heart of the garden, a one-dunam plot has been allocated for the planning and development of a therapeutic food forest, to be co-designed with Reforest. The planning and implementation will be carried out by program participants, guided by their evolving needs and lived experiences.

Tanadam brings together young people facing life challenges and elders of Ethiopian descent—holders of deep agricultural knowledge and cultural wisdom—for shared work in the soil, intergenerational dialogue, and collective healing.

Three anchor groups are engaged in the project: adults, elders, and mothers. Each contributes its own strengths and insights, together forming a compassionate, learning, and inclusive community.

Agricultural practice is not only a creative tool—it is a healing space that eases isolation, builds self-worth, strengthens personal resilience, and lays down roots of hope in both body and soul.

Tanadam embodies the possibility of communal regeneration—through land, culture, and the human connections that bind them.