Iskashitaa Refugee Network collects, distributes food, helps refugees find community

For seventeen years, the Iskashitaa Refugee Network has been harvesting, distributing and preparing food harvested from the yards of local businesses and homeowners.
Micah Hadley, harvesting coordinator, said the program has three main focuses; the primary goal regards community, and the other two focus on food-related issues.

Fruit harvested from a biweekly Iskashitaa harvest. Iskashitaa aids and empowers local refugees while eliminating food waste. Everything picked during a harvest is either distributed directly to volunteer refugees, local aid organizations or used in products such as oils and marmalades at the organization headquarters.

“First and foremost, it’s about reintegration, reintegrating people into a new life here,” Hadley said. “It’s also reducing food waste and increasing food security.”

The name itself points to those goals. Iskashitaa is a Somali and Maay Maay word meaning “working cooperatively together.” Maay Maay is the language of the Somali Bantu ethnic minority.

The program started in 2003, when Barbara Eiswerth, founder and director, recruited refugee students to help identify areas of local produce waste. They then harvested and redistributed the otherwise-wasted foods. Eventually, the program received a grant from United Way of Tucson and is now operating under the fiscal umbrella of St. Francis in the Foothills University Medical Center, a federal 501c3 organization. Since then it has grown in both range and creativity, Hadley said.

“We’ve not only expanded the diversity of harvests we’re doing, but the sheer amount of harvests,” Hadley said. “We’re swimming in citrus. Yesterday we harvested 1,500 pounds of grapefruit and it’s not like you can just use all that. There’s stuff left over.”

“That’s a really cool part of our programming that can grow, adding value,” Hadley said. “We have lots of value-added goods that we’ve been able to sell at different markets in Tucson.”

Hadley said capacity and flexibility are the organization’s two biggest challenges.

“Being a really small nonprofit, we have a really small capacity, which results in really tight time frames, so flexibility is a challenge,” Hadley said. “I’m really happy we’ve got people in the office who are 110 percent enthused about what we’re doing. It’s so necessary.”.

Hadley said that he’s met people from at least 17 different countries, and while that can be a challenge, it is also what makes the job worth it.

“It’s just the nature of the beast that you deal with people coming from a million different cultures,” Hadley said. “It’s a really cool diversity that makes our jobs really dynamic, and that’s a good challenge to have. It brings a plethora of benefits.”

Source: The Daily Wildcat