Spotlight On an Urban Farm Helping Refugees and Immigrants Build Community

In a green oasis, set amid the freeways and malls of San Diego’s Mission Valley, a garden grows. Produce grown here fills subscription CSA boxes, as well as plates at the project’s cafe a few miles west. But MAKE Projects isn’t just a farm or cafe. It’s a community-supported agriculture program that furthers a larger purpose: it’s a training ground for refugee and immigrant women.

According to the American Immigration Council, women slightly outnumber men at over 23 million female immigrants in the U.S. But while immigrants move by choice, refugees have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, war, hunger and climate change. Some need items as basic as shoes. At MAKE, these women are offered not just support, but a launching pad to their new lives in the US. 

MAKE Projects, which stands for Merging Agriculture Kitchens and Employment, is a spin-off of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement agency, and provides the women three months of paid worker training through a community garden, kitchen and 16-table café.

“While not all refugee and immigrant women have a strong connection to farm, everyone has a strong connection to foods that evoke memories, nostalgia or just an important sense of cultural identity,” says Anchi Mei, MAKE’s executive director and founder.

Mei launched the nonprofit in 2017 to address the lack of workforce development opportunities for refugee women with English language and cultural barriers, who can find themselves isolated and trapped in poverty. 

“Over time, we have come to understand that access to employment is more than financial. It is personal, emotional, social and benefits not just the immediate family but the whole community.” 

Mei’s program for women and youth, which has built partnerships with local colleges, community organizations, employers and customers, is a necessary bridge.  

Weekly English coaching provided by volunteers helps smooth the path for the newcomers. But it all begins with the universal language of food, in all its worldly flavors. The first two weeks are spent on the farm.

MAKE Farm, a roughly quarter acre plot, uses low-till practices to improve soil health and nutrient density in crops, along with intercropping – growing two or more crops close together – and integrated pest management. Fish and kelp meal are the main fertilizers. Throughout the grounds, pollinator plants and bird habitats promote cross-pollination and a more complex ecosystem.

The resulting bounty travels to the kitchen side, but it loops back to the farm in leftovers to nourish new plantings. “We promote living soils with a robust composting system using our restaurant food waste and regular applications of compost teas,” Mei says.

Farm Program Manager Robbie Wilcox chooses a diverse planting mix. A winter CSA mix contained Taiwanese chrysanthemum greens alongside more familiar customer favorites: spinach, radishes, beets and sweet potato. The produce goes into several dishes at the cafe, like the MAKE Market Salad and Wellness Soup Bowl, tailored by chef Renee Fox around whatever is fresh and abundant that week. 

As the women plant, prune and prep vegetable boxes for subscribers, they ease into the many skills needed to enter the workforce. And when they begin the next phase of the program by working at MAKE’s cafe in North Park, they continue to hone their culinary and hospitality skills serving up such fare as Afghan chicken, cardamom crepes and toasted milk bread; recipe ideas the women share from their own experiences. Several graduates have gone on to work in food service at local hospitals.

“We are a better San Diego with more different voices, flavors and faces at the table.”

Not all choose to work with food, however. Gulnara, who is originally from Kazakhstan, found a job in finance and operations at a local nonprofit. Others work in local hospitals and schools, like Nejat, a recent graduate from Ethiopia.

The farm to table training is a unique way to enter the American workforce, Mei says. Students learn essential job readiness skills and expectations as they transition from the farm to a more intensive work experience in MAKE’s restaurant. And with participants who have hailed from over 30 countries since the program began, it’s a cultural dialogue that enriches the entire San Diego community.

Last year, she says, “was epic.” Thanks to a large workforce development grant, they expanded their facilities and scaled up the adult trainee program, allowing them to work with many more refugee and immigrant women of all different English speaking levels, and educational and professional backgrounds from their home countries.

This year, they are preparing to move to a more permanent address, as they work through the permitting for a new MAKE cafe in San Diego’s Normal Heights neighborhood, not far from their current location. It’s expected to open before the end of the year. In addition to the existing farm in Mission Valley, the new cafe will add its own 2,000 square foot garden on-site. 

Mei says they won’t be deterred by the roiling political climate, as another round of the Trump administration again takes aim at immigrants. After all, they survived the first go-round, and forged their way during COVID, the toughest of times.

“We will continue to be nimble, resourceful and resilient, much like our participants,” she says. Fortunately, MAKE has a strong community of local supporters that believe in their mission. 

“We are a better San Diego with more different voices, flavors and faces at the table.”

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