Practicing faith and improving community health through refugee church gardens

issues:  Refugees and immigrants arriving in the U.S. often struggle with a multitude of stressors: learning a new language, laws and systems while trying to find jobs, housing and coping with past traumas. Community gardens offer physical and mental health benefits to alleviate some of these stressors. There remains a shortage of gardens for growing refugee and immigrant populations in the Minnesota Twin Cities metro area.

description:  We describe qualitative evaluation results of a church refugee garden project initiated by Arrive Ministries, a refugee placement agency that links refugees with church gardens. Refugee gardeners from various church sites participated in focus groups in their native language yielding six Karen, one Bhutanese, and eight church volunteer focus groups. Transcriptions were coded and analyzed to identify community health benefits and challenges.

lessons learned:  Volunteers identified multiple benefits including “putting their faith in action” by reaching out to the stranger in their community; learning about countries and customs from refugees; growth in new relationships among the gardeners, one another, and neighbors; and good stewardship of the land. Refugee gardeners highlighted the value of access to land, vegetables, fresh air, exercise, the social benefits and cost savings. Multiple refugees said  gardening helped them with depression.  The primary challenges were communication issues across multiple languages and recruiting church volunteers.

recommendations:  Churches and other faith communities consider converting their lawns into community gardens as a means of health promotion, outreach and social connection. Public and private agencies can promote and sustain such initiatives through community grants.