By Megan Burks
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Refugee Paradox: New Americans Lead Way to Health
While refugees carried few tangible items with them to City Heights, they brought strong connections to the land, healthy eating habits and sound family traditions. These foundations have changed the food landscape in City Heights, giving rise to urban farming there and keeping its farmers market in business.
It seems the people often considered to be struggling the most are actually setting the example for longtime residents to lead healthier lives.
This week, we take a look at this paradox in a three-part series starting today on www.SpeakCityHeights.org and KPBS Evening Edition.
US-Born Residents Struggle to Eat Healthy
The first part in our series introduces you to Latonya Frazier, a mother of two trying to improve her diet on a fixed income. A few times a month, she walks through her hilly neighborhood with her 7-year-old daughter to catch a bus to Food-4-Less, where she struggles to afford healthy options.
She’s exactly the kind of person the City Heights Farmers Market is
trying to reach out to with its Fresh Fund program, which doubles residents’ budgets for fruits and vegetables. But Frazier didn’t know about the program until being contacted by Speak City Heights.
The program has long benefited refugees who found out about it through the International Rescue Committee and shop regularly at the market for hard-to-find Asian vegetables. But US-born residents like Frazier aren’t as connected to community resources as refugees. Many also lack a tight-knit community where such information travels by word-of-mouth.
Now, a statewide nonprofit is working to help African-American’s like Frazier connect to resources and information about eating healthy. It’s targeting black shoppers with healthy soul-food recipe displays in chain stores, and turning to African-American churches to replicate the kind of outreach done by the IRC.
Refugees Turn to Tradition to Fight Obesity, Diabetes
We continue the series by taking you into the home of a local Somali family keeping up with traditional food habits to stay healthy.
By continuing to eat East African meals prepared with organic vegetables, the family hopes to solve common American health problems like obesity and diabetes.
Cooking Class Bridges Cultural Food Gap
Traditional meals, however, often compete with the foods their American-raised children crave. The children of refugees often break from their food culture to eat pizza and fast food with friends.
A bimonthly class at the City Heights Wellness Center is working to keep the teens healthy by bridging the gap between refugee mothers and daughters.
The women compromise by adding their cooking techniques and ingredients to American favorites like lasagna. The teens, in turn, learn to cook the foods of their heritage.
Join us Thursday for a peek into the class.
Southeast San Diego Takes Cue From Refugee Farmers
Refugees aren’t just setting the example for teens and longtime City Heights residents. They’re also inspiring neighboring communities such as southeastern San Diego to embrace urban farming.
Growing the trend in low-income, minority neighborhoods has been tough.
“Part of what we see ourselves doing is connecting southeastern San Diego to the greater local food movement,” said Diane Moss, the executive director of Project New Village. “And there are not a lot of people of color in that mix.”
Moss, whose nonprofit started a community garden in Mt. Hope, is trying to change that. She’s helping her community embrace agriculture as an opportunity for job growth and skill development.
Community gardens in City Heights have set an example for the kind of success she hopes to see.