Why Refugee Community Gardens?
Refugees traveling to Minnesota, both as primary and secondary arrivals, travel with hope. Hope of finding community, hope of finding security, and hope of finding opportunity to achieve their dreams. Meanwhile, refugees arriving to Minnesota today are less likely to be socially connected, they are more likely to have physical and mental health conditions, they are entering the United States at a time when there are overall less economic opportunities and are being resettled into poverty.
It takes a community to truly resettle a refugee. Local refugee resettlement agencies such as World Relief Minnesota strive to mobilize community partners in this process by utilizing congregations and volunteers to provide social support to families upon arrival. While an asset, what is lacking in the community are ongoing opportunities for local integration with the people who are their neighbors. While refugees learn quickly to navigate benefit systems and supports, required to meet their basic needs, their human needs for socialization, belonging, and physical and mental health are too often overlooked.
Newly arrived refugee groups like the Karen, Bhutanese, and Somalis tend to congregate in neighborhoods based on housing affordability and the desire to be with others from their culture. While there are benefits to living in proximity to others of the same culture, in some cases this has led to a sort of cultural isolation for the refugee community within the larger community. With struggling communities relying solely on support from within their cultural group “mainstream” community resources are overlooked and refugees do not become fully engaged in the “mainstream” communities in which they reside. In Minnesota, we have seen that without that connection in their community that is outside of their ethnic group, a feeling of safety has been difficult to achieve. This contributes to the fear and isolation that is characteristic of newly arrived populations.
Meanwhile, the skills and experience these populations bring with them are not being utilized. Many Somali, Karen, and Bhutanese refugees coming to the United States have a long tradition of being agriculturalists. They come from agrarian societies and still have a deep attachment to the land, desire for self-sufficiency through food production, and cultural identification with gardening. While their intuitive sense of the land and food production is good, they need training related to agriculture in northern temperate climate zones and specific to gardening practices utilized in growing and marketing vegetables in Minnesota. At the same time, there is growing demand for locally produced foods in the Twin Cities. The interest in local and fresh produce in the United States has continued to grow over the last twenty years, with each year more people and public agencies embracing the opportunities for preventative health and business development.
Summer 2010
Redemer Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake contacted World Relief Minnesota this spring to ask about participating in a work day with refugees. Because of their location in the eastern metro area, we suggested they assist with the work of a community garden at Rolling Hills apartments in St. Paul. Some of the Karen refugees World Relief has resettled live in these apartments.
Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services put up flyers at the apartment complex hoping to find out if there was interest in gardening. Fifteen families from Burma, one family from Nigeria and one American family living in an apartment complex in east St. Paul enthusiastically indicated interested in growing food for their families this summer, and the property owners agreed to provide families with the use a large flat green space as a garden, and water from the apartment building. (read more …)
World Relief Minnesota, Minnesota Council of Churches, St. Paul Area Council of Churches and Gardening Matters, together in a collaborative effort, hope to expand opportunities for refugees to participate in community gardening to sites across the metro area in 2011.
