Tavon Center is a unique program that connects people with disabilities to the community and nature through horticultural therapy.
The Tavon Center program is built with three core elements in mind:
• Work: Building vocational skills
• Nature: Connecting to plants, earth, and animals
• Community: Inclusion and contribution to our friends and neighbors

Description:
The Tavon Center, located in Issaquah, Washington, will offer severely disabled young adults the opportunity to plant, cultivate, and harvest a vegetable garden, and to sell the garden’s produce at a local farmers’ market. Having completed their secondary education at age twenty one, young adults with severe disabilities have limited choices. Because programs that involve them in the community are few, and employment opportunities rare, most spend their post-high school years at home, interacting primarily with family members. 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, we strive to increase the opportunities for disabled young adults to participate in the wider community.

History:
The Tavon Center was created by a group of concerned parents, friends and professionals who recognized the need for creative community based programs for young adults who are disabled and who are beyond high school age.
The program has been developed to center around gardening with the potential for the disabled to sell their products to the community.
In a survey we conducted in 2003/2004, it was determined that there are approximately 1200 disabled within ten miles of the Issaquah area.

In 2002, spearheaded by Therese Vafaeezadeh, a group of concerned individuals met to discuss the need for providing a quality day care service for developmentally disabled young adults, who are beyond high school age. A decision was made to establish a 501(c)3 corporation and to proceed with a study to determine the feasibility of success if such a service were to be developed on the East Side of Lake Washington. We established and received our non-profit designation in 2003. The study confirmed our belief that the program could be successful if we could find the right location.
Contact with Lakeside Industries in Issaquah resulted in their very generous offer to lease to us on very liberal terms a five acre site close to downtown Issaquah.
The Tavon board approved proceeding with the garden design and the design of the house. Daniel Winterbottom, a horticultural architect and professor at the University of Washington, was retained to design the garden and Ali Vafaeezadeh, a local architect and home builder, donated the house design. The board also voted to proceed with fund raising to build the garden and the house.
We held our first dinner/auction in September, 2005. It was a low key function, held in a school gymnasium, financed and run by board members and their friends. The dinner was a success and we raised approximately $50,000.00.
During the summer of 2006, our board members, relatives, friends, business donors, and other volunteers constructed our sensory garden with wheel chair accessible garden beds and a large decorative pergola.
We started construction of the house, which will hold our program in March, 2007 and we are scheduling completion for early Spring, 2008. We hope to accomplish most of the work with volunteer labor.
We plan to start operations in Spring, 2008 and expect our client base to be up to twelve by the summer of 2008. The staff will be increased as our client base increases Also, during 2007, we plan to continue the ground work toward building our garden per our master plan
We also plan on having "pea patches" so local group home clients will be able to use our gardens.

Contact person: Therese Vafaeezadeh, Executive Director, (phone), (email)

Address:

24017 SE Black Nuggest Road Issaquah, WA 98029 This location is handicap accessible (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.tavoncenter.org

Directions:

Take I-90 eastbound to Issaquah. Take the Highland street exit. Go left off the exit. Follow Highlands drive to south east Black Nugget Road.Turn right on Black Nugget Road. Go approximately one block and then turn right up the long. . . (more)

Miscellaneous Information

Liability
	Yes
Does your organization welcome court-ordered community service volunteers?
	No
Does your organization have volunteer positions for youth 12-18?
	No