Immigrants Old and New Harvest Food for Food Bank


Daniel Rearick | March 14, 2013

Giving back to her new community, just six days after coming to N.C. as refugees from Cuba. Photo: CWS

Giving back to her new community, just six days after coming to N.C. as refugees from Cuba. Photo: CWS

As originally published on the Uniting NC website:
http://www.unitingnc.org/2013/02/immigrants-old-and-new-work-together-to-help-our-community/

Last month another amazing group of recent immigrants and longer-time North Carolinians came together to give back to our community. We harvested 1,500 pounds of fresh produce at Goodwill’s farm outside Durham, NC. All that food will be distributed to needy area families by the Food Bank of Eastern and Central North Carolina.

Our energetic volunteers included immigrants and refugees from Cuba, Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Iran, all now living in the Raleigh/Durham area, and all eager to help out. A number of the recent refugees found out about our event from the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program office in Durham, N.C., and Activate Good also organized a great group of young volunteers to join in the work.

The day started off cold, but we warmed up quickly as most of our crew set to work picking collard greens while others worked in the greenhouse.

As we worked, we learned more about our diverse group – a few of us had lived our whole lives in North Carolina; others were born in Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Iran, but had lived here for many years; and that the newest members of our group had just come as refugees from Cuba and Myanmar only a few days ago. But everyone agreed they were thankful to be here in North Carolina and happy to give back to their community.

By Daniel Rearick, United NC