Twice a year our Grow Local program holds a Resource Giveaway Day through our Spread the Harvest project. Recently, we have begun to provide interpretation services at these days in four different languages other than English; Spanish, Burmese, Nepali and Arabic. Jonathan (pictured above) has been the Burmese language interpreter for the last two events and has eagerly arrived ready to help Burmese program participants fill out new applications, go from station to station to collect their gardening resources, and even helped shovel compost into bags and buckets!
Last spring we were able to provide free gardening resources to over 50 new Burmese speakers and their families, friends and neighbors due to having an interpreter onsite. We were lucky enough to get connected with Jonathan, and the other interpreters for the event, through the Multicultural Refugee Coalition.
We wanted to learn more about Jonathan and his experience with our Spread the Harvest project and event, so we sat down with him and asked a few questions.
SFC: Have you gardened before?
Jonathan: Yes, I have a big garden.
What interested you in helping at the Spread the Harvest event?
I am a gardener, I am very excited to involve and helping at the Spread the Harvest event because I want to know more about the growing vegetables, nutrition, health and science, it also community service, meet the people and make a happy life through the garden.
What was your favorite part of the event?
The part [involving] communications and information.
What inspired you to get your friends and members of your community to come down to the event that day?
Most of them are not educated and they don't speak English well, they don't know where to buy the seeds and fertilizer, they are very good gardeners. They want to know more about the information, I told them I will be the interpreter for the events.
Why do you think that it’s important to grow your own food?
To grow my own food is better than buy at the shop! I feel like the plants give me a more healthy and long life, happy life, and another way of helping better the environment and help everybody to live a long life.
Do you think this event is beneficial to the community?
I strongly agree the event is beneficial to my community, because representing different culture foods and to learn the culture of different countries. We are one in America, we learned so many new things from the Spread the Harvest events.
Thank you very much and I am very proud to be a part of the Spread the Harvest events.
Jonathan has helped the Spread the Harvest project extend its reach by inviting members of his community to the bi-annual Resource Giveaway Day event and encouraging them to become participants of our Spread the Harvest project. Thank you Jonathan!