Honoring Legacy and Growth: The Alan Silverman DIG Garden at Hospital Silence
December 13, 2024
December 13, 2024
In 2020, 42 friends of Alan Silverman, a former DIG board member, came together to honor his legacy by sponsoring the creation of a memorial garden at the Belfort Health Clinic in southern Senegal. Located in the bustling, urban neighborhood of Ziguinchor, Belfort is a public clinic that provides essential healthcare services, including specialized care for People Living with HIV (PLHIV). Alan dedicated much of his career to improving the lives of PLHIV—a cause closely aligned with DIG’s founding mission.
where he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in his youth. His Peace Corps service and his career in global development and HIV led him to join DIG in 2009, where he served on the board until his early death in 2017.
After Alan’s death, his vibrant network of friends and family chose to celebrate his amazing life by planting a DIG garden at Belfort, clinic in 2020. Their generosity became an extension of Alan’s legacy and expression of their deep love for a man who gave the world so much.
However, as the world changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did the circumstances at Belfort. The clinic’s leadership changed, and the funding that had once supported the garden’s upkeep—particularly during the dry season—was no longer available. Worse still, the garden faced severe flooding during the rainy season, which made it increasingly unsustainable. After much deliberation, DIG made the difficult decision to close our work at Belfort. While this was not an easy decision, we found comfort in knowing that the farmers we had trained continued to grow their gardens at home, using the skills they had learned through DIG’s program to feed their families and improve their lives.
Hospital Silence, the regional hospital in Ziguinchor, serves as a central hub for the care and treatment of PLHIV in the Casamance region. It is also the administrative heart of the surrounding health clinics. This made Hospital Silence an ideal location to install a garden. In fact, DIG had planted one of our very first clinic gardens at Silence back in 2007 and some of our current local facilitators were trained there.
Despite a decade-long shift in our geographic focus, when DIG left Senegal to stand-up programs in East Africa, our relationship with the hospital’s leadership remained strong. Last year, we were honored to be invited to bring a garden back to the hospital grounds. In doing so, it felt only fitting to name it the Alan Silverman DIG Garden as a tribute to Alan’s lasting influence on our work and mission.
As we planned the new garden, we faced a unique challenge. While Hospital Silence is a regional hub for higher-level care, patients typically visit only intermittently for specialized treatment. Their ongoing care is primarily managed at health clinics closer to their homes. This made finding participants who could regularly tend to or engage with the garden difficult. But the significance of the garden, given the hospital’s role, was undeniable. We decided to design it not just as a growing space but as a signpost—a living symbol of hope and connection for patients as they moved through the hospital for care. Today, as patients approach the HIV clinic wing of the hospital, they walk past the Alan Silverman DIG Garden, where vibrant vegetable beds and fruit trees line the path. The garden becomes a visible invitation for patients to stop, learn, and engage.
A few patients who live nearby help care for the plants, and DIG staff come weekly to support the garden, offer trainings, and host cooking demonstrations. “This isn’t a traditional DIG demonstration garden, where the same group of participants comes for weekly training,” says Seckou Badji, DIG’s Senegal Program Director. “We wanted to create something that captured people’s attention, made them ask questions, and encouraged them to seek more information about our programs at their local clinics.”
Instead of walking into a strictly clinical setting, patients are greeted by the cheerful presence of DIG facilitators who invite them to experience the garden firsthand. This approach fosters curiosity and engagement, providing patients with a tangible connection to DIG’s mission.
“How we care for our bodies and how we care for the land matters. Alan understood this deeply. He knew that bringing access to good nutrition where it was needed most wasn’t just important—it was life-saving. To see his spirit live on through this garden brings me great joy,” said Sarah Koch, DIG’s Executive Director. “Alan taught us so much, and DIG owes a great deal of our success to his foundational impact as a supporter, board member, and friend.” The Alan Silverman DIG Garden is more than just a plot of land; it’s a beacon of hope, a reminder that better nutrition, better care, and stronger communities are possible, even in the most challenging of times.
Development in Gardening (DIG) was founded by two US Peace Corps volunteers who served in Senegal, West Africa in the mid 2000s. Rooted in the belief that food is a powerful leverage point for changing the world, DIG is focused on using agroecology to improve the nutrition, livelihoods, and wellbeing of some of the world’s most uniquely vulnerable communities.
One of DIG’s founding board members, Alan Silverman, was instrumental in directing the organization’s strategic focus towards serving people living with HIV (PLWHA). Understanding the critical role good nutrition plays in the care and treatment of HIV, Alan encouraged DIG to build lasting partnerships with hospitals and clinics prioritizing this uniquely vulnerable population. In moments where DIG might have chosen a more generalized focus on agriculture, Alan stressed the unique role DIG can play in filling critical gaps for these most marginalized groups.
