Our mission
Create abundance for women by creating abundance on the land.
Lilavena creates ecologically beneficial, philanthropically supported livelihoods for women in Central Florida through regenerative agriculture, food, flowers, honey and community-centered land stewardship. We cultivate abundance for women, help feed families, contribute agricultural resources to public schools and surrounding communities, and develop small, replicable sanctuary sites that strengthen local food systems and ecological resilience.
Why Lilavena exists
Around the world, women do much of the work of growing food and feeding families, yet they are less likely to own the land, tools and capital that turn that work into income. Meanwhile, in fast-growing regions like Central Florida, open land is often valued mainly for what it might become.
Lilavena joins those two facts into one proposition. If land is cultivated carefully and the work is paid, the same few acres can produce food, flowers and honey, livelihoods for women, resources for local schools and healthier ecosystems.
Anti-extractive and pro-abundance
An extractive system takes more than it returns: soil worn thin, water drawn down, labor left unpaid, profits carried elsewhere. We want to build the opposite, systems that regenerate what they use and spread their benefits widely.
In practice that means rebuilding soil rather than mining it, choosing crops that suit the site’s water, paying the people who do the work, keeping a share of each harvest in the neighborhood, and publishing what we raise and spend.
Abundance, in this sense, is not a mood. It is a measurable result of careful work: more food, more income, more life in the soil.
Four threads, one practice
- Land
- The foundation. Its condition decides what everything else can be.
- Livelihoods
- Paid work that makes the land productive and builds lasting skills for the women who do it.
- Food systems
- Local growing and giving that shortens the distance between a harvest and the families and schools nearby.
- Ecological resilience
- Healthy soil, pollinator habitat and careful water use, so a site can keep producing through hard seasons.
Who benefits
Women gain paid work, training and a stake in productive land.
Families near each site gain access to fresh food through distribution partners.
Public schools can receive produce, flowers and hands-on growing lessons, arranged with teachers and administrators.
Surrounding communities gain green, productive places, pollinator habitat and a place to learn.
A staged strategy
We are not waiting for the perfect amount of land to begin. Each stage is a complete piece of work in its own right.
Prepare
Form the organization, set up honest financial controls, research sites and build partnerships.
Establish the first site
Secure land, test and restore it, plant, and begin paid work and local distribution.
Document the model
Record costs, yields, labor and outcomes so the approach can be judged and repeated.
Grow the network
Open further sites as funding and operating capacity allow, sharing knowledge and resources between them.
How we will measure progress
We will report money raised and spent, land secured, food and flowers distributed, paid work created, volunteer hours, school and community partnerships, and changes in soil health over time.
Figures will appear on our transparency page only once they can be verified, with the date and source of each.
What we intend, and what is done
The long-term vision
A network of small regenerative sites across Florida, each producing food, flowers and honey, employing women, supplying schools and families, and improving the land it occupies.
Where we are today
We are at the beginning. Lilavena has not yet acquired land, hired staff or distributed food. We are researching sites, building the organization that will steward them, and preparing to raise funds responsibly. Each milestone will be recorded on our transparency page when it happens.