Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Cultivating an immigrant crop: Joe Frolik
By Joe Frolik  
October 5, 2011 

After the squash had been picked, Shawn Belt and his crew of Asian and African refugees began to rip up the remains of the plants for composting. But Belt noticed that his team members were first snipping any last shoots and leaves. 

When he asked why, Belt learned they were delicacies, headed for the dinner table. Chalk it up as another example of education going both ways at The Refugee Response, a fledgling Cleveland nonprofit. The group’s Refugee Empowerment Agriculture Program works 2.5 acres at the Ohio City Farm, on land owned by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, plus another acre on contract for Great Lakes Brewing, the Ohio City beer-maker and restaurant. 

“It was a good lesson in what we, as Americans, eat and what other people eat, and we’re going to capitalize on that next year,” Belt said Friday as we huddled in a metal kiosk on the south edge of the farm, a Jim Thome shot from the West Side Market. The counter was piled high with onions, beets, Swiss chard, cabbage, bok choy and blazing-hot red peppers. This time next fall, you’ll probably see tender squash leaves and shoots, too. 

“We’re going to start growing for Asian markets and African markets,” said Belt. “Next year, our crops are going to be much more diverse than anything I’ve ever seen.” 

As immigration literally changes the face of America, one of Cleveland’s challenges is to regain its former status as a draw for newcomers. Immigrants can help cities reinvent themselves by contributing entrepreneurial energy -- according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, about a quarter of all recent tech-based startups had foreign-born founders -- and by helping to create a cosmopolitan feel that attracts other talent. 

As critical as immigrants were to Cleveland’s success during its heyday, the modern city has been slow to embrace this idea. But now Global Cleveland, a major effort at talent attraction, is up and running and will have a strong emphasis on wooing immigrants. The Cleveland International Fund has raised more than $100 million from foreign investors willing to seed job-creating projects here in return for green cards. 

And then there are smaller efforts like The Refugee Response, which grew out of a trip that landscape architect Paul Neundorfer, his parents, siblings and longtime family friend David Wallis took to refugee camps in Thailand about a decade ago. Wallis was so inspired by the needs there that within three months he was back, teaching in the camps that are home to tens of thousands of Burmese refugees. Over the next few years, Neundorfer would see his friend during occasional trips to lecture in the region. 

When Wallis returned to Cleveland, he and Neundorfer began working with some of the nearly 1,000 refugee families -- Myanmar (formerly Burma), Bhutan, Somalia and Iraq are among the trouble spots represented -- resettled here since 2007 with help from the State Department and local agencies. “It just kind of grew organically from one family to another,” says Neundorfer. They began recruiting friends to the cause. They dipped into their own pockets. In January of last year, they incorporated. 

Less than two years later, The Refugee Response has a small staff and three missions: a home-tutoring initiative, a scholarship program and Belt’s farm program. Besides the land in Ohio City, the nine ag trainees tend small plots on the Metro campus of Cuyahoga Community College in conjunction with its culinary arts program. They study English, business and financial literacy. They earn money. 

Neundorfer and Wallis, a contractor, run the agency like their own businesses. They look for niches no one else is filling. They test ideas, discard what doesn’t work and hope to ramp up what does. They’ve built partnerships with other nonprofits, schools, foundations and businesses. 

And they tap the knowledge of those they work with: One of their key hires is Thomas Kate, a Burmese refugee with three college degrees whom they’d met in Thailand. Once he was resettled in New York, “we made a beeline to the Bronx to bring him here,” says Wallis. Kate speaks five languages; he’s working to find new markets for the farm’s output. 

“It’s really about education and empowerment,” Neundorfer says. “We want to empower these families to contribute to the economic development of the region.” 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer