Maybe, maybe not! I know a little about farming and I’m not sure even with an $85,000 grant from the US government, refugees in Tampa will be able to support and maintain much food production on 6 acres of land.
This is yet another feel-good story about refugees with no work “finding” satisfaction and “community” by growing foods they are familiar with back home inspired by none other than Michelle Obama’s pronouncement on refugee gardens—“It’s a model for the nation, for the world.”
Go here for the Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program and see if your city is getting gardening grants. The Tampa project is first on the list.
From the Tampa Bay Times:
Pastors Joseph Germain and Berhanu Bekele started the garden 3 1/2 years ago. Germain led a congregation filled with refugees and noticed that many were leaving the state because they couldn’t find a livelihood.
He wanted to find a way to help them settle and find community, something often missing in resettled immigrant populations.
A little helpful background for new readers on what refugees in Tampa receive from the feds:
About 9,000 refugees live in Tampa, said Janet Blair, Community Liaison for the SunCoast Region Refugee Services Program offered through the Department of Children and Families. They come from countries including Burma, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan.
Refugees must prove to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in social groups. They come to Tampa with legal status and a small set of benefits — cash assistance, Medicaid and food assistance for eight months — provided by DCF.
The goal is to enable refugees to find employment within the first eight months, Blair said. After a year, they become eligible to apply for citizenship.
At first there was admirable private Christian charity!
Nearly four years ago, Pastor Germain attended a meeting of people who work with refugees. He mentioned what he had seen in his congregation. Bekele, pastor of St. Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Tampa, said he had 6 acres of land.
Most of the people from his congregation came from agricultural backgrounds, Germain said. It was a perfect marriage of resources. The refugees could tend a garden and plant any crops they chose, including plants from their native lands if the soil was right for it. Refugees could do what they wished with the crops, even selling them on the side if they had extra.
Bekele and Germain received $10,000 from the Allegany Franciscan Ministries, enough to buy plants, tools, chickens, sheep and goats. But foxes got to the chickens, and the grant ran out. The pastors had been essentially sustaining the garden on their own.
Who needs private charity when here come the feds!
Now the group has received almost $85,000 from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, which has stepped up funding of community gardens across the country.
If any of you live in the Tampa area, or any other community garden getting federal grants (here), keep an eye on this project and let us know how it’s going. BTW, I wonder if this counts when immigrant advocates claim refugees are more entrepreneurial than Americans? (The latest hot open-borders talking point!)
The photo is from a post back in May where we learned that similar refugee gardens had gone bust in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. No one wanted to work!