Named event or history
Refugee families resettled in Chapel Hill and Carrboro from the 2000s, and the schools, gardens, and congregations that grew with them.
4 indexed records are connected with this event.
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Orange County Health Department figures record 19 refugee direct arrivals in fiscal year 2005-2006, from Burma, Cuba and Iran. At the time one resettlement agency, Lutheran Family Services, served the Triangle.
All 55 refugee direct arrivals recorded in Orange County in fiscal year 2006-2007 came from Burma. A second resettlement agency, the Triangle office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, opened.
Orange County recorded 255 refugee direct arrivals in fiscal year 2007-2008, from Burma, Iran and Colombia, the highest annual figure in the 2005-2017 series. A third resettlement agency, the Triangle office of World Relief, opened.
During the sharp rise in arrivals from Burma, the Orange County Health Department initiated an Immigrant and Refugee Health Program. The 2018 report found Karen and Burmese were the two refugee languages most requested by the department's patients.
Orange County recorded 194 refugee direct arrivals in fiscal year 2008-2009, from Burma, Bhutan, Iran and Iraq. The Triangle office of Church World Service opened as a fourth resettlement agency.
Although direct refugee arrivals fell to 86 in fiscal year 2010-2011, local schools and health care agencies reported significant in-migration of Burmese, Karen and Chin residents from other counties and states.
Kelly Owensby started Transplanting Traditions in 2010 with three years of federal Office of Refugee Resettlement funding, after meeting Karen families at a community garden run by the Orange County Partnership for Young Children. In the first year 44 people from Burma turned a pasture into a farm.
After Triangle Land Conservancy began working with the farm in 2010 to find more land, Transplanting Traditions held its first growing season at the conservancy's J. Logan and Elinor Moore Irvin Nature Preserve, off Jones Ferry Road, in 2011.
The Karen Community of North Carolina was registered as a nonprofit corporation with a Chapel Hill principal office and Eh Tha Pwee as registered agent. In May 2012 he estimated that about 400 Karen families lived in Orange County.
Asif Khan, then a UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduate, founded the Refugee Community Partnership to strengthen support networks among refugee families in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The organization, now based in Carrboro, runs help lines that include Karen and Burmese.
The Refugee Support Center, a volunteer-based nonprofit in Carrboro, was established in July 2012 to serve refugees in Orange County. Its main client groups are from Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria, and it offers Karen interpretation.
Josh Hinson launched the initiative at the UNC School of Social Work in 2013 to support resettled refugees, connecting refugee communities to interpreters, mental health screening and treatment.
The Town of Chapel Hill's Building Integrated Communities assessment reported about 1,200 refugees living in Orange County, roughly 90 percent from Burma. Of 74 refugees surveyed through Transplanting Traditions and the Refugee Support Center, 57 were from Burma and spoke Karenic languages.
People: Hannah Gill
The Chapel Hill Town Council adopted a Language Access Plan in 2019, following the Building Integrated Communities process in which immigrant and refugee residents named language access as a key need. The town has since translated hundreds of documents into Karen and Burmese as well as Spanish and Mandarin.
Founder Kelly Owensby stepped back in spring 2022 and Hsar Ree Ree Wei, who was born in a Thai refugee camp and joined the farm as a youth intern in 2012, became executive director.
The Town Council adopted a Language Access Plan naming six community languages (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Karen, Burmese and Arabic), with Spanish the most spoken. The plan was developed with UNC's Building Integrated Communities program and the Refugee Community Partnership.
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