Transplanting Traditions Community Farm

About the Organization:

Their mission is to uplift food sovereignty in the refugee community through access to land, education and opportunities for refugee farmers to address community food insecurity and the barriers they face in reaching their dreams of farming. The farm provides a cultural community space for refugee adults and youth to come together, recreate home and build healthy communities, and continue agricultural traditions in the Piedmont of N.C.

The Issue:

Over the past decade, refugees from Burma have been the largest Southeast Asian refugee group to be resettled in the US. Today, the U.S. refugee community from Burma has reached close to 200,000 and families from Burma comprise one of the largest refugee groups in North Carolina, reaching over 9,000. In Orange County, where Transplanting Traditions Community Farm (TTCF) is based, refugees from Burma represent 90% of the refugee community and youth from Burma are the largest youth minority in Chapel Hill.

Upon resettlement, refugees face enormous economic, health and education barriers, making successful transition challenging. Low literacy, limited formal education, language barriers and unfamiliarity with US norms and expectations, refugees are often only able to access low-paying hospitality or service jobs. As a result, many refugees from Burma live below the poverty level, with little opportunity for upward mobility. These economic challenges further limit access to health and education impacting overall wellbeing and food insecurity. Combined with the inability to easily access culturally relevant Asian crops often contributes to chronic health conditions. Cultural bereavement from the loss of traditions, behaviors, and traditional work like farming also compounds mental and physical health issues in the refugee community. Youth and children are significantly impacted by these issues struggling to adjust and reducing social and education outcomes.

The Solution:

In response to the influx of refugees from Burma and to address the complex challenges of resettlement, Transplanting Traditions Community Farm (TTCF) began in 2010, originally as a community garden to support refugees from Burma to re-establish their food, farming and cultural traditions in the U.S. Since then, the work has evolved to uplift food sovereignty in the refugee community through access to land, education, and leadership opportunities. The farm provides a cultural community space for refugee adults, youth and children to come together, recreate home, heal from trauma, foster a healthier community and maintain valuable agricultural traditions as they build new lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina. In addition to being a significant NC cultural center, TTCF is home to a collective of sustainable farm businesses, owned by 13 Asian refugee women farmers, working together to co-create solutions to resist assimilative forces that face their families and the larger community. All of the individuals that participate in TTCF programs are refugees from Burma, majority women and girls, representing 2 minority ethnic groups, Karen and Chin, speaking four distinct languages – Chin, Burmese, Poe Karen and S’gaw Karen, in addition to English.

Manisha G. Bewtra, AICP

Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor to Tucson Mayor Regina Romero

Manisha Bewtra, AICP (she/her) is Mayor Romero’s Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor. In this role, she leverages her passion for planning for thriving, healthy, and inclusive communities with her love for policy-making and politics as the Mayor’s liaison on transportation and land use issues. Manisha is an experienced public process facilitator and project manager and works collaboratively with the Mayor’s team and city departments to apply an equity lens to all city initiatives.
Manisha has built her career on bringing divergent perspectives together, facilitating conversations around change, and generating data-informed solutions that move communities forward. She is driven by public service and champions equitable policies and inclusive community engagement.
Prior to her current role, she worked at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston as a senior regional planner and the manager of the analytics team, at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership where she was a statewide technical assistance provider, as an adjunct city planning instructor for Master’s degree program courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at Arizona State University, and in municipal government and nonprofit community development organizations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chandler, Arizona.
Manisha has served on various equity-focused organizations and committees and is a graduate of Emerge Massachusetts, the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership, and the Massachusetts Commonwealth Seminar, three organizations dedicated to training underrepresented groups to influence public policy and to run for office. She has a Master of City Planning degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a BA in Economics and Art from The University of Iowa, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She currently serves as a member at large for the American Planning Association Arizona Southern Section and is a member of the executive team for the Asian American and Political Islander Caucus for the Arizona Democratic Party.
Before moving to Tucson in the summer of 2020, she lived in the Boston area for twelve years. During her years in Melrose, Massachusetts, she served as a Human Rights Commissioner and subsequently as a City Councilor. When elected to the Melrose City Council, she became the first person of color ever to serve in elected office in Melrose. She grew up in Iowa and identifies as Desi/Indian-American. She, her husband, and her son felt welcomed and right at home in Tucson when they moved here – even in spite of a pandemic and searing summer heat.

Arnie Saiki

research, writer, program director

Broadly focusing on regional economic and geopolitical themes in the Asia and Pacific regions, Arnie Saiki is currently leading a working group on data, statistics and valuation in the Pacific. His book “Economic and Ecological Accounting: Towards Intemerate Values,” was published last year by the Pacific Conference of Churches, the Pacific Theological College and the University of the South Pacific.

Since the publication, this campaign has been introduced to the Ecological and Economic Justice program at the World Council of Churches and he is participating in a G8 Interfaith forum for the inclusion of Wellbeing indicators into our economic accounts.

While national statistics and ecological accounting normally fall under the purview of government, academic or international institutions, Arnie has been campaigning in democratizing our ecological data, seeking support for a proof-of-concept accounting program that would enable poor, impacted, and indigenous peoples to actively participate in how we account for our socio and economic biodiversity. Intemerate Accounting is an equation that helps to correct accounting disparities that have, to a large extent, excluded the Global South. Revising our accounting system can provide access and opportunities that cross wide campaign sectors, bringing hope, action and efficacy to reverse climate change, restore our ecological biodiversity, and redistribute global wealth more equitably.

Arnie has been actively promoting and working on global justice campaigns since 2007 when he received a “We the People” grant from the Hawai’i Council of the Humanities for his work on Hawai’i Statehood. He has organized conferences with Hawaiian national independence groups, managed the Save Rapanui campaign after the Chilean military forced a lockdown of Easter Islanders. Arnie spoke at the World Bank representing the Pacific Island Forum, and participated in discussions around regionalism in the Pacific. He was recently appointed the US-Pacific Diplomacy and Solidarity Mission for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), and is on the management team of the Deep Seabed Mining Campaign.

In 2011, Arnie received the blessing from Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell to organize a counter-conference in Honolulu while APEC was there and coordinated the Moana Nui conferences, an international partnership between the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po. For the last ten years he has been campaigning on issues around trade, development, ecological resources, indigenous issues and militarization in the Pacific.

His essays, “TPP at the End of the Line: a briefing on economic cooperation and capacity building” was published in American Quarterly by John Hopkins University Press, and “Manifesting the Liquid Continent,” was published by Yunnan National University, as part of the 1st International conference on Asia and Pacific Ethnology and Anthropology.