Dear L’Arche Family and Friends,

I want to take a moment to share with you our exciting plans for the future of L’Arche Farm and Gardens.  The Farm has been a special part of L’Arche Tahoma Hope since 1983 – a place where our core members, staff, volunteers and friends work side by side on the land, building community and establishing life-long friendships.  As we work to plan the long-term future of L’Arche, it is very important to me that we take intentional care of the Farm and plan carefully to ensure it continues to flourish.

Last year I convened a committee of different community members to listen to all parts of our community and gather together the hopes, dreams, and desires for how the Farm can grow in its ability to serve our mission.  I am grateful to all of you who participated in this process and provided input to our listening committee.  The Director’s Circle has taken this input and developed an Action Plan that outlines the steps we plan to take over the next 5 years to ensure the continued vitality and growth of the Farm.  

Included in this plan is a meaningful mission statement for our Farm program:

L’Arche Farm and Garden animates the mission of L’Arche Tahoma Hope by inviting people of all abilities to work together and build community. Through farming and working the land together, we cultivate relationships and belonging with each other and the earth.

This plan recognizes the critical role the Farm plays as the ‘front porch’ of L’Arche – a place where people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together in mutually transforming relationships.  We will ensure the Farm continues to thrive and becomes even more deeply integrated into the overall mission of L’Arche by focusing on three key goals of the Action Plan:

• Mission and Service: Providing core members with opportunity, pride, purpose, and a sense of community in well-structured programs;
• Stewardship and Sustainability: Exercising careful and responsible stewardship of all Farm resources, including finances, the land it works, and the relationships that sustain it; 
• Community Engagement:  Providing transformational experiences for individuals, families, schools, and other organizations working together with people who have intellectual disabilities.

With this action plan, I will work together with different staff members including our Outreach and Programs Director, our Farm Manager, and the rest of the Farm team. Next, we will create an Implementation Plan for L’Arche Farm and Gardens. This plan will help us measure our goals and create a mechanism that helps us track our progress over time. The Implementation Plan will ebb and flow as time goes on and we will build it together with the strategic focuses from our 5 year plan.

A key message we heard in our meetings with the community was the importance of communication and sharing information so that all our community can work together to build the future we want for the Farm and for L’Arche Tahoma Hope.  From time to time I will provide updates on the progress we are making in our regular newsletters and on our website. I look forward to joining with you in making this ambitious vision a reality over the coming years!

Kind regards,

Katie Miyakado