AdventHealth donates $1.5 million to Special Hearts Farm

As part of a more than $9 million investment into the community projects of five Central Florida nonprofits, AdventHealth awarded $1.5 million to the Winter Garden-based Special Hearts Farm and its Forever Home Project. 

“We are very blessed, and we are so appreciative to AdventHealth,” Special Hearts Farm President Kathy Meena said. “(This funding) will provide so many opportunities for our individuals with special needs to gain more training and employment opportunities within their community of Winter Garden, it's a true gift to serve our population. We look forward to continued partnership with AdventHealth, and we’re just so grateful and appreciative for the best Christmas gift ever.”

AdventHealth’s initiative hopes to give these nonprofits a chance to bolster their missions and drive lasting change that will help bring prosperity and wholeness to the community.

“We believe access to well-paying jobs and housing goes hand in hand with good health,” said Tricia Edris, chief innovation and partnerships officer for AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, in a press release. “Providing compassionate, whole-person care extends far beyond the walls of our hospitals, and we are proud to unite these incredible organizations to tackle projects that will not only help our most vulnerable neighbors but help our entire community feel whole.”

Special Hearts Farm — a nonprofit organization that serves individuals with disabilities and unique abilities by providing adult day training, supported employment and possible entrepreneur business opportunities related to farming and gardening experiences — plans to use the funding to complete phase one of its Forever Home Project. 

“For the Forever Home Project … which is us moving to our new site and expanding and growing our mission, we received state appropriations to build the new Agriculture Training Facility and to finish a partially animal barn,” said Emily Davis, the Director of Development at Special Hearts Farm. “What we expressed to AdventHealth is that the missing piece of the puzzle to complete phase one of our project is the funding to build our agriculture training event barn — which will be a place where our farmers can gain training and employment in retail, hospitality, catering and event planning. It’ll also be a place to host farmers’ markets, corporate events and fundraisers. When we expressed the need for that AdventHealth decided to award us the funds needed to cover 100% of the cost of our agriculture training event barn, the missing piece of phase one.”

As Meena described this funding as a Christmas gift, it took a bit of holiday magic to align the stars and help this partnership come to fruition.

Since an initial community meeting in May, the Forever Home Project has faced a lengthy zoning process and opposition from some residents of the Lake Avalon Rural Settlement on which the new facility will be built. But as it seems to work out in every Hallmark holiday movie, the timing of the project’s approval was perfect. 

“We have really prioritized our partnership with AdventHealth because we feel like our mission here is essentially to improve the health outcomes of individuals with disabilities in our community,” Davis said. “So we've been having AdventHealth come to our volunteer dates for quite a while now; they're major volunteers with us … and we naturally established a great relationship with them, and some of their leadership — that are just incredible and wonderful people with hearts to serve the community. Through those relationships, we made it known to them what our funding needs were ever since we secured our new property. Though it took a little bit of time for us to move through some of the zoning process, we eventually were able to get the needed approvals for everything. And luckily, shortly after we got our zoning approval, it just so happened to be around the time that they were choosing their capital projects for the year. They invited us to come and do a presentation, and we did. After presenting to their collaborative community council … we were just so incredibly blessed to be chosen as one of the funding recipients.”

According to AdventHealth’s press release, the funding will help Special Hearts Farm “serve even more residents with special needs by providing enhanced workforce training and job opportunities with the addition of a training center and barn on a new 19-acre property in Winter Garden. This expansion will provide job training for more than 150 residents and create 50 employment opportunities at the farm, empowering residents with special needs to lead more independent and meaningful lives.”