05 · Living PEACE Village

Food Forest

Living systems

A layered growing system connecting soil restoration, biodiversity, school learning, food and heritage-based enterprise.

What this experience reveals

From an idea to a lived experience.

The Food Forest shows regenerative living as everyday practice. Assalam's published record places it within wider permaculture work, while the chronology connects it to Regreening Zanzibar and its work with schools and communities.

Layered food-growing systems
Soil restoration
Locally useful plant diversity
Learning through cultivation

Published record

Each figure keeps its own scope so programme totals, site facts and future ambitions are not confused.

1 acre: Food forest established; Assalam Annual Impact Report 2025, page 17
10,000+: Trees planted across Assalam's work; Chronology total, 2017-June 2026; not Food Forest-only
10,000: Fruit and spice trees targeted annually; Regreening Zanzibar initiative launched April 2026

Evidence noteThe one-acre figure comes from the 2025 report. The 10,000+ tree figure covers Assalam's wider work through June 2026, while 10,000 trees per year is a Regreening Zanzibar target rather than an achieved annual result.

Inside this experience

Knowledge made visible.

Three ways this part of the village connects inherited knowledge, practical learning and community life.

Narrative supplied by Assalam in July 2026 and checked against the 2025 annual report and chronology through June 2026.

School gardens as green engines

Regeneration begins in the classroom.

Assalam works with schools so children and teachers participate directly in planting, composting and caring for useful trees. A school garden becomes both a growing space and a long-term relationship with the land.

The approach connects environmental education to repeated practice: learners observe what survives, what improves the soil and what can contribute food, shade or spice over time.

Students planting a seedling together with gloved hands — Tree care begins as shared, hands-on work.

Assalam participant carrying a young coconut seedling — Useful trees connect learning, food and long-term shade.

Students gathered around a tree-planting demonstration — A school garden turns ecological practice into a living lesson.

Hands-on hope

Learning through the soil.

The supplied story focuses on soil-stained gardening gloves as a simple image of participation. Restoration is not presented as something performed for a community, but as work learned through touching, planting and returning to the same ground.

This practical emphasis is central to the PEACE model: ecological knowledge becomes memorable when it is experienced rather than only explained.

Student showing soil on a hand after planting — Soil-stained hands carry the evidence of learning by doing.

From forest to wellness

A growing system with social links.

The campus Food Forest includes fruit, spice, medicinal and support plants within one layered landscape. Assalam connects that growing knowledge to the Hamamni social-enterprise story, where local botanicals inform soap and natural-product making.

The relationship illustrates a wider aspiration: healthy soil, useful biodiversity, skills and dignified livelihoods should reinforce one another rather than operate as isolated projects.

Product-level sourcing volumes and the share of Hamamni inputs supplied by the campus Food Forest are not yet published.

Assalam team member cultivating a green campus plot — Regeneration is maintained through repeated work on the land.

Pictures and source record

Look closer.

Authentic Assalam imagery and the supplied annual-report record keep the experience connected to real work.

Hand-painted sign marking the Ubuntu Food Forest at Assalam — The Ubuntu Food Forest is named at the entrance to the growing system.

Assalam learners and facilitators planting together — Food resilience is developed through practical, place-based growing.

All 12 experiences, one connected village.

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