COMMUNITY
SEEDS OF CHANGE Plant It Forward ’ s Growing Impact
Plant It Forward Farms is one of those rare solutions to a problem that really has the potential to flourish in more ways than one . The organization partners with local social and religious groups to provide land and tools to refugees with farming skills who settle in Houston .
Houston is already known as one of the most diverse cities in our nation , resettling 3,000 refugees yearly . I learned from TERESA O ’ DONNELL , co-creator of Plant It Forward with her brother , PAT O ’ DONNELL , that “ to be a refugee you have to make it out of your country ; you have to flee . Then you can apply to the United Nation ’ s High Commissioner for Refugees for refugee status . You have to prove that you are being persecuted for your religion , in fear of your life , or that you don ’ t trust your government to protect you .” Then it takes 5 – 10 years on average to be relocated . By the time all the requirements are met and refugees come to the US , they are faced with an unfamiliar world where even turning on warm water has to be learned . Plant It Forward offers them sustainability through something familiar .
A series of serendipitous events led to Plant It Forward , beginning with the book Wellbeing : The Five Essential Elements . Pat , owner of a successful software company , wanted to invest in their employees , basing the idea on the five elements : Career , Financial , Social , Physical and Community Wellbeing . Each executive picked an element ; Teresa ’ s was Community . A Houston Chronicle article about refugees led her to reach out to a resettlement agency . “ By the time I left an hour later [ after welcoming a Somalian family at Hobby ], I knew that this had been a pivotal moment for me . My heart had been changed and my life was probably going to change . But I didn ’ t know what we could do . I couldn ’ t see the fit with my software company and these refugees ,” shared Teresa . But A SoCal
Insider with Rick Reiff on PBS would start Teresa in the right direction : actress Tippi Hedren asked her manicurist to teach the Vietnamese refugees how to do nails , creating a billion dollar industry that even today is still dominated by Vietnamese-Americans . Teresa ’ s learning journey continued with Urban Harvest and the concept of Market Gardening . Then , Teresa negotiated with a church for use of their three acres of land to be used as farmland by 14 Congolese refugees , farmers in their homelands . They would teach them to farm organically , harvest and sell the goods to provide for their families , while providing fresh , organic , urban-grown goods to the community .
It took 10 months for the land deal to come through , and Plant It Forward could start an urban revolution . Today , there are nine individual farms at four Houston locations .
The capacity of our local community to flourish with this model is astounding : from unused and neglected land seeing new life , to refugees given real hope and the potential to be pillars in our community , to consumers having access to locally grown seasonal food . Teresa ’ s wish for Plant It Forward “ is that we will secure the funding to create a Plant It Forward model training farm . This will give us a place to demonstrate best practices in urban farming and a training location for a new set of refugee farmers in 2017 .”
For more information , visit www . plant-it-forward . org Teresa @ plant-it-forward . org
By Carla Valencia de Martinéz Photography courtesy of Plant It Forward Farms
42 LOCAL | december 16