Overview

The Vine Communities Center is concerned with creating resilience within our local communities. The UAE's desert climate makes it a challenging place to create food security. The country primarily depends on imports to feed its population. The increased socio-political tensions and possible future interruptions to the food supply chain make this part of the world vulnerable to food shortages.

In addition, the increased popularity of consumer culture and excessive reliance on technological enhancements have contributed to cultural knowledge loss within the population regarding essential life skills such as traditional food preparations, desert gardening, food storage, and survival skills. The Vine Communities Center of Sustainable Development will work on strengthing resilience within the local population, focusing on the elements of Personal Resilience, Self Sufficiency, Survival Skills, and Communal Resilience among all age groups for both UAE nationals and the Expat community.

The Center is founded on the fundamental belief in humanity's ability to become resilient in an uncertain future and invests in our ability to thrive in the years to come.

We work to enable local communities to learn the skills necessary for local reliance, preparedness, and mutual aid covering four main domains as the pillars required for building sustainable and resilient communities. Those four domains are based on the cultivation of a certain skill set as follows:

• Personal Resilience for Individuals (Covering aspects of Mind, Body, and Spirit)
• Essential Life Skills for Children and Adults
• Family Self-Sufficiency Skills
• Communal Resilience for All Community Members

Our Approach

We believe that learning is social, experiential, and contextual. Therefore, our programs are a balanced mix of theory and practice. Our children are provided every opportunity to try and experiment; consequently, we created Lab Hours dedicated for children to access the workshop areas or the garden room to apply their learning and try things out while further supporting their innovation and creativity.

Our programs are designed to provide individuals with the "know-how" to achieve their resilience and self-sufficiency goals. We deploy a 'just-in-time' learning model, meaning that individuals get to choose from various short classes that suit their needs and fill their skill gaps to progress on their journey toward self-sufficiency and personal resilience.

We are a community-led project. Therefore, our instructors are local community members with experience. We also welcome adults with specialized expertise who want to use our facility to give a one-off how-to or a DIY session to share their knowledge about related topics. Please go to the Instructors Registration Page for more information about the instructor registration process.

Licencing

Vine Communities Center is located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The center is registered under the Department of Economic Development and will soon be accredited by ACTVET. The Vine Communities mini-Farm located at Um Al Emarat Park is a space for learning designed to provide a model for everyday families to learn the skills necessary for growing their food and learn the basics of food preparation and preservation. The Vine Communities Center classrooms are located inside Abu Dhabi and host the Idea Lab, the Garden Room, The Workshop, and our main offices.