By Blanca Rincon | Project Leader
Dear honors,
The Therapeutic Garden has now completed its second full summer of activity, and the experience has been incredibly positive. The garden is already benefiting a growing number of children and adults with neurological diseases, providing a safe, stimulating and therapeutic environment where nature becomes part of their care. Over the summer months, the plants have flourished and produced flowers and fruit, giving children the opportunity to see, smell and touch a wide variety of colours, shapes, scents and textures. These natural experiences provide valuable multisensory stimulation while supporting attention, exploration, communication and different cognitive abilities.
The garden has also become an important working space for the professionals supporting the children and their families. Training sessions, team meetings to review clinical cases, and feedback sessions with families have been developed in the spaces specifically created for these purposes. The continued use of the garden demonstrates that it is not simply a recreational green space, but an active therapeutic resource that can be integrated into professional interventions and adapted to the individual needs of children with neurological and rare diseases.
A particularly important new phase of the project has now begun with the start of the new school year. Thanks to funding secured in recent months, three classes from Querer Foundation's special education school, Colegio Querer, will receive therapy sessions directly in the Therapeutic Garden, benefiting a total of 18 children. The sessions will begin this week at Centro Terapéutico Querer and will run over 20 weeks, during September, October, April, May and June. Two professionals will coordinate the programme: one responsible for the school and one from the therapeutic centre. The intervention aims to support improvements in emotional self-regulation, attention and executive functions, adaptive behaviours and psychological well-being, with both quantitative and qualitative indicators assessed by the professionals implementing the program.
Continued funding is therefore essential to maintain and develop the garden as a sustainable therapeutic resource and to extend its benefits to more children, adults and families. Beyond the direct therapeutic impact, the project promotes children's right to inclusive, healthy environments and highlights the contribution of green spaces to mental health and well-being. It will also generate valuable knowledge about nature-based, multisensory interventions for children and adults with neurodevelopmental and rare diseases, contributing to an emerging field with significant potential relevance to public health. Continued support will allow the Foundation to consolidate the progress achieved so far, evaluate the results of the new programme and continue providing children with opportunities to learn, develop and benefit from the therapeutic power of nature.
We are deeply grateful to our donors for their continued support and generosity, which makes this work possible, and we hope that, with their continued donations, we will be able to reach and support even more children in the years ahead.
With gratitude,
Blanca Rincon
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