By Steve Jeffries<\/p>\n
On the morning of June 15, Sankofa Community Farm<\/a> in Southwest Philadelphia was alive with activity as farm staff, dozens of Hoby Youth Leadership students, and local volunteers prepared for a day of planting, cultivating, and maintaining the farm.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the Hoby students joined for the day as part of their summer leadership program, Sankofa Farm regularly hosts workdays where the public can join the farm\u2019s staff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sankofa Farm started as a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Horticulture Society (PHS), Bartram\u2019s Garden, and the City of Philadelphia, and was founded by co-directors Chris Bolden-Newsome and Ty Holmberg.<\/p>\n Holmberg says the farm was first inspired when participants of the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative<\/a> (AUNI), an organization that works with school groups in West Philadelphia to promote nutrition and food access, visited The Food Project<\/a> in Boston, where 14 acres had been cultivated to make a youth-run farm.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe started looking to see if we could do that here,\u201d said Holmberg. \u201cWe had a meeting up here at Bartram\u2019s for something else, but we saw this property was right on the trolley line. So we just cold called the executive director of Bartram\u2019s at the time and made a proposal. And it just snowballed from there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n PHS and Sankofa partner to maintain the farm’s greenhouse space. As part of the City Harvest initiative<\/a>, seedlings and supplies are distributed to over 200 participating community gardens across the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sankofa is nestled into the larger Bartram\u2019s Garden space, which has a larger full-time staff that can focus on long-term development and funding. As employees of Bartram\u2019s Gardens, Holmberg says Sankofa works hand-in-hand with the larger garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re part of the community here,\u201d said Holmberg. \u201cTheir partnership allows us to be talented and spend our time building relationships and not in payroll or writing grants all the time. It\u2019s a really beautiful situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Five elements make up Sankofa Farm \u2014 an education center, an orchard, community garden plots, the greenhouse and nursery space, and then the farm itself.<\/p>\n Three pillars of focus\u00a0<\/p>\n The name Sankofa is derived from a saying from the Akan people in West Africa, loosely translating to the garden’s saying, \u201cGo back and get it,\u201d a call to reconnect with the land and culture. To this end, the garden is built upon its principles of being spiritually rooted, intergenerational, and connected to the African diaspora community.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEducation is built into everything we do,\u201d said Holmberg. \u201cWe want that education to be around building self-reliance and community-reliant skills, so people can go and do for themselves \u2014 space for people to develop tools for self-reliance and food sovereignty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A foundation of self-reliance, according to Holmberg, is promoting local food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is when people have control over their food system and have agency and accessibility over the food that is within their community.\u00a0<\/p>\n Accessibility is not only measured by the ability to find fresh, locally grown food<\/a> \u2014 often difficult in Southwest Philadelphia \u2014 but also the cost of the food and its culinary and cultural accessibility. This means that food grown in the garden is part of the food traditions and diets of the neighborhood’s residents, many of whom are from Southern Black communities or from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n Holmberg says the focus on being culturally relevant means the garden stays responsive to what food people in the community are asking for and responding.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGood partnership starts with authentic listening,\u201d explains Holmberg. \u201cSo we listen to what food folks want to see. We\u2019re one of the few places where people have access to their cultural crops like fresh black eyed peas or butterbeans or okra that’s grown right around the corner and not sprayed with chemicals.”<\/p>\n Additionally, Holmberg says that Sankofa offers a place for people to reconnect and rebuild their relation to the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a space to come and work alongside people and understand and know your history, learn more about your cultural crops, and connect with people around you,\u201d Holmberg says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Volunteers\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sankofa is maintained and cared for by a combination of its full-time staff, student interns, community members, and other organizations like PHS and the Philadelphia Orchard Project. However, they also offer opportunities for the public to learn and help to keep the garden flourishing.\u00a0<\/p>\n