{"id":296776,"date":"2026-09-30T10:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/296776\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:20:11","slug":"karen-refugees-put-down-roots-in-a-community-garden-space-in-west-philly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/296776\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen refugees put down roots in a community garden space in West Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udc8c Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In West Philadelphia, behind an old building at the Lee Cultural Center, a long patch of dirt sits among neighboring trees and overgrown weeds. While most locals would stroll along past the land and not think twice, for a Philly immigrant community from Myanmar (formerly Burma) \u2014 the unused soil is a haven, teeming with possibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very excited about our new project,\u201d Naw Day, co-executive director of the Karen Community Association of Philadelphia<\/a> (KCAP), told Billy Penn on Saturday. \u201cThis is our new land. We secured this place one year ago \u2014 finally, approved everything. So today is [the] groundbreaking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plan, she said, is to turn the space into a new community garden. Saturday\u2019s groundbreaking went on despite nor\u2019easter rain. After all, a little downpour is nothing for this population.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Naw Day is a Karen refugee (kuh-REN) \u2014 a minority group that has gone through civil war and genocidal violence<\/a> in their home country. Many began to flee to Philadelphia in the mid 2000s. KCAP leaders note that an estimated 500 Karen community members currently live in South Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Karen people are also avid subsistence farmers. Many spent years hiding in jungles from the Burmese army, surviving and growing their own food.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The garden] is a huge deal to people because obviously people have a history of being forced off of their land and having to migrate, and always carrying seeds with them,\u201d said Rebecca Winkler, an anthropology\u00a0doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and project coordinator for the KCAP.\u00a0 \u201cAnd so, over the last 15 or so years\u2026 we\u2019ve grown at all different sites in Philadelphia. Some in South Philly, some in West Philly, and none of that land has ever been permanently secure.\u201d<\/p>\n

This new space at Lee Cultural Center, however, is theirs. It\u2019s called the Taw Meh Paw Community Garden, after an ancestral figure in Karen folklore. The space represents home, unity, peace and resilience. The KCAP has partnered with Farm Philly<\/a> for a long-term lease that allows the Karen people to maintain the land for as long as they choose to do so, according to Winkler.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about as secure as land security can be in Philadelphia,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our community\u2018s big dream,\u201d Naw Day said. \u201cEspecially to the elderly people. Every year, in summertime, they are waiting for plants. They are waiting for gardens to open. They will enjoy going and seeding, planting, watering every single day, because they miss their home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Taw Meh Pah garden space. (Julia Binswanger\/ Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

One grandmother in the community brought soil from her home in Myanmar to the new location.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has soil that she has been carrying with her this whole time that she can finally put in the ground here as a permanent place,\u201d Winkler said. \u201cBecause wherever you plant, that is where your home is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting to this point was no small feat. The Karen people have moved from different community gardens throughout the years, such as Novick Urban Farm on Lawrence Street. Many do not speak English, but instead their native language S\u2019gaw Karen, which is rarely an option on government forms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is 15 years of amazingly hard work,\u201d said Sally McCabe with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. \u201cYou\u2019ve got land issues. You\u2019ve got language barriers. You\u2019ve got climate barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re gonna terrace the hills. They\u2019re gonna garden in the woods,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re gonna garden behind the health center. They\u2019re just gonna make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"(Julia Binswanger\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

Clara Varadi-True is an urban farming expert who has been working with Philly\u2019s Karen population for years. On Saturday, she was leading tours in the drizzle to different groups \u2014 laying out plans for the new garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe farms will have five to eight core farmers, and probably 25 farmers totally,\u201d she explained. \u201cWhen they fled their refugee camps and then through Thai refugee camps, and then to South Philadelphia, farming is their lifelong skill. So it\u2019s really special to have the ability to kind of reconnect with that and feed their community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal is to grow crops native to Southeast Asia like peppers, bananas, papayas and more. Something that is only becoming easier, as Philadelphia grows hotter and wetter thanks to climate change.<\/p>\n

\"\"Karen community members paint at the groundbreaking ceremony. (Photo by Clara Varadi-True)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be clearing trees,\u201d Varadi-True said. \u201cWe\u2019ll do a lot of forest planting there, and possibly have our shed and wash station back there too under the trees, but we\u2019ll be clearing out all the invasives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll said and done, we\u2019ll use every inch of it,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc8c Love Philly? Sign up for the free Billy Penn daily newsletter and stay in the know<\/p>\n

The group is also planning to grow rice thanks to a steep slope on one side of the property.<\/p>\n

During Saturday\u2019s groundbreaking, the KCAP was also holding an indoor potluck. The food was made with crops they had cultivated. One long-term goal for the space is to start selling affordable, organic produce back to neighbors in West Philly. Perhaps even turn the site into a summer camp for Karen youth, so that they can learn farming skills from their elders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"(Photo by Eh Nay)<\/p>\n

Jacquie Morges works with SoWe, a nonprofit in Lancaster City. She was walking around the grounds to learn more about the KCAP mission and joined in on the potluck.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust hearing the presentation made me want to cry,\u201d said Morges. \u201cThese are the beautiful community wins where people really get to be their whole selves, and I think that\u2019s what America should be about \u2014 is this melting pot that learns from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, KCAP leaders noted that this new space will not just be for Karen people, but all neighbors in West Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to maintain our traditional plants, save our seeds and share them with other people who need these vegetables too,\u201d Naw Doh, co-executive director of the KCAP told BP in an email. \u201cEspecially other immigrants and refugees from South East Asia, India and Africa. We need our food for our happiness and health. It is so important that we have fresh, local, and organic produce that we can afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want us to know what our foods can do to keep us healthy and to teach the young people that healthy eating can taste good,\u201d she added. \u201cIt makes us happy to grow together. Home is a special feeling and taste, and the garden will help to give us a place to feel at peace and to heal. This will be a place where we can remember our stories and memories. Finally we have a home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd70 Nice to see you. \ud83e\udd70
(Instead of a paywall)<\/p>\n

Local news should be free and accessible, which is why we ask readers like you to support our work rather than charging a fee to see it. If BP helped inform you, join as a member today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udc8c Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. In West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6189,564,42633,122671,69,71,70,645,122672],"class_list":["post-296776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-community-gardens","tag-featured","tag-karen-community-association-of-philadelphia","tag-lee-cultural-center","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-south-philadelphia","tag-taw-meh-pah-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}