Overview of the organisation I worked for 

Les Jardins d’Haïti is an EPHAD (retirement home) located in Marseilles, France which can be described as a community third space. The organisation aims to enrich and nourish the lives of the elderly in Marseilles through community activity. 

The idea for Les Jardins d’Haïti was originated in 1951, when the altruistic woman Suzanne Boucraut created the association “Nos Vieux Jours”, which began as a small hospice for the elderly in a former convent. From this initial idea, Les Jardins d’Haïti grew, as Suzanne’s son Robert began to transform the home through bringing joy and music in the 1980s in the form of a music performance hall. The responsibility for the space was then passed down throughout the family, and in 2015 the space began to be transformed into the version of it we see today: a place which breaks stereotypes of retirement homes, and brings together generations through intergenerational programmes. The key philosophy and mission of Les Jardins d’Haïti is to create an environment which nurtures social ties between a mix of generations and creating a “joie de vivre” amongst the elderly population in Marseilles. Les Jardins d’Haïti also value the importance of giving autonomy to the residents and refraining from treating them as if they are ‘sick’, but instead favouring natural and humanistic forms of care. 

There are many features and programmes which make Les Jardins d’Haïti so unique, for example the existence of the co-working space. The organisation offers a free co-working space to the surrounding community which offers free WiFi, meeting rooms and spaces to quietly work in an effort to create intergenerational links with the residents and the wider community. Furthermore, Les Jardins d’Haïti also welcome Youbee for Kids, a crèche of young children who are able to take advantage of the wisdom and gentleness of the elders. Another one of the most impressive programmes running within Les Jardins d’Haïti is the music school, which takes place in the hugely impressive theatre. Lastly, Les Jardins d’Haïti offers a shared garden for the community to use as they please, which is the focus of the ‘re_action for impact programme makesense x Laidlaw Foundation’ project. 

Les Jardins d’Haïti currently welcome 93 elderly residents, and 12 young children as members of the crèche. In an effort to improve the living experience of residents, the organisation run events to instil fun into their lives, for example ‘Apéro Live’, a live music event which takes place every two weeks for the residents. Within the ‘re_action for impact programme makesense x Laidlaw Foundation’ project, we aim to develop these experiences further by creating new events to run in the shared garden with the objective of welcoming the wider community into the third space. 

Project goals and objectives: 

For the six weeks of my LiA programme, myself and 2 other students were given 2 'missions' from Les Jardins d'Haïti. The main 'mission' was to improve the use of the shared garden which they have in their residence. The organisation had been experiencing several issues regarding their shared garden: the garden was very dry and neglected, meaning we had to come up with a plan to improve the condition of the garden and allow new life to grow there. Furthermore, the garden was not easily accessible to the residents, therefore it was within the mission to come up with a way to make it more accessible to the elderly residents, or a way for the residents to enjoy the outputs of the garden without having to go up there themselves. Another request from the organisation was to improve community involvement, as the staff of Les Jardins d'Haïti wanted to encourage members of the surrounding neighbourhood to get involved and use the garden space, however they had not experienced much interest. Considering these expected goals from the organisation, it was also important for us to put a plan in place for the work we completed in the 6 weeks to be kept up and maintained after our departure from Marseilles. 

Project outcomes: 

For the first two weeks of our six week project, the focus of the programme was to explore the organisations we were working for and really get to grips with the missions we set out to accomplish. During this process, we began to understand the key goal of our mission in more detail: to create community engagement for Les Jardins d'Haïti. Whilst the improvement of the garden in our mission was emphasised, it became clear to us that this was not the main goal. Instead, the goal was to use the garden as a tool to encourage community engagement, for example through hosting events in the garden. Therefore, this made us realise that a complete transformation of the garden space was not essential, as at first this seemed a very daunting task to complete in the space of 6 weeks.  

A key aspect of our project was therefore to come up with a plan for how the impact we make can sustain after our departure from Marseilles, which we began to do by creating connections with neighbouring organisations. One key connection we created was Centre Social St Elisabeth, a social centre very close to Les Jardins d'Haïti which focuses on intergenerational connections and combatting loneliness in the elderly population. Upon speaking to the organisation, they seemed very keen to get involved in events at Les Jardins d'Haïti, and had many ideas for partnerships such as gardening days for their teen group, and for their elderly group to use the space to practice pétanque. We were delighted with the enthusiasm of this organisation and proud that we facilitated a connection between them and Les Jardins d'Haïti. 

We also recognised the importance of getting into contact with garden centres and individuals with gardening experience, as we lacked gardening experience to pass on during volunteering or gardening events. Therefore, we arranged a meeting with a local flower shop owner in Marseilles named Nadege (business name Ziggy Fleurs). Nadege was incredibly helpful in passing on gardening knowledge which we could include in our report and then pass on to the staff and volunteers at Les Jardins d'Haïti. Furthermore, Nadege was kind enough to agree to form an informal partnership with Les Jardins d'Haïti, and generously agreed to let us pass on her contact details to staff so that when planting season comes around in Spring, Nadege can donate any spare plants and resources to Les Jardins d'Haïti. Furthermore, Rose, another member of my group took the lead on extensively research into the possibility of composting for Les Jardins d'Haïti, and created detailed instructions on how to apply for a free compost bin and how to keep up with the maintenance and included this our report in case this is something Les Jardins d'Haïti would be interested in starting.  

Another key aspect of the project was planning events to encourage community participation – however, a key obstacle we encountered was that creating the events we were brainstorming may not be possible in the space of 6 weeks. Therefore, we came up with the idea of planning the events in great detail and creating all of the resources needed, so that after our departure it would be incredibly easy for the staff at Les Jardins d'Haïti to host these events. We did so by creating a four week reocurring event calendar which included volunteer gardening events, pétanque tournaments (a popular pass-time in Marseilles), and family fun days. I took the lead on planning the family fun day, and thoroughly enjoyed creating a schedule and creative resources for the day, which included music, painting, storytimes and a scavenger hunt. I also took the lead on creating flyers, posters and social media content for Les Jardins d'Haïti as Marion, one of our project leads, expressed to be that she would like some posters and other resources to put up around the building and the surrounding neighbourhood.  

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the staff at Les Jardins d'Haïti, and I look forward to keeping in contact with them to hopefully see the future results of our hard work! A key highlight of my trip was attending multiple Apéro Live events at the organisation, were we enjoyed listening to some live music and getting to know the residents to the best of our ability (considering the language barrier!). I hope that one day some of the event ideas we came up with will be as successful as Apéro Live!