 My name is Christine Arach Ross. I'm originally from South Sudan and I'm now here in Omaha, Nebraska. We are right now located at the Omaha Home for Boys in Nebraska. And I have started an organization with a few refugee women. It's called the Refugee Women Organization of Nebraska. And our group is to bring the women together and allow them to have a voice, and a collective voice that is. So we come together, we do other things. We talk about our issue and since majority of the women in my group don't speak English very well. They can speak English, but they cannot express themselves in English. So I usually listen to them and try to find solutions to the issues that they're struggling with. As we gather it, we thought we have to have a common thing that we're all doing. So looking back in our background, we found that majority of us come from agricultural background. So we figured agriculture is the best way we can all bond together. So and that's how we started growing, starting a garden. And the idea behind the garden is not just to grow, but also to grow something that we use, something that we eat. So from my own experience being a refugee myself, we found that there are certain vegetables that I grew up with and most of the women probably grew up with that they don't find in the regular grocery store. The two things that we share in common, one is the sourleaf. The sourleaf with the South Sudanese, especially the Dacholi, we really love it a lot. It's kind of like in our culture, it's one of the royal food, very, very important. So we call it Malakwam, but it's called sourleaf. And the Asians also love it. They love it, they eat it a lot. Another thing is the pumpkin. We eat the pumpkin fruit itself, but also eat the pumpkin leaves. Even the Asians, they eat the leaves and the fruit. So that's some common thing that we came to realize that we are doing that. The Ceregrine has supported us a whole lot. We had to get some tools, seeds, and also the, like we got the buckets just in case we, for harvesting, when we are vesting, we have somewhere to put it in before we would just lay it down on the grass, which we know that we're gonna wash it. But now we have the buckets and some of the tools. Most of our education is done through hands-on, because as I said earlier, majority of the women don't speak proper English, but they understand English, but they cannot express themselves. And so we used a lot of picture, pictorial education where we saw them, the picture of something and explain, and they can understand what it is. And also we use hands-on training. So when we come to the garden, we learn a different method. Ceregrine has given us to at least bring these women to work in the garden, so that they are not isolated. Some of the women stay home, they don't drive. So if the husband has gone with the car to work, so she's stuck at home the whole time. And isolation can bring, since most of the refugee have post-traumatic disorder, and so that can trigger that very easily. But coming to socialize and be in the garden and have some different focus from what is home has really been very helpful. The future for this project is to also introduce the ingredient or the vegetable to the American community. And how are we gonna do that? So we have also set up that after a while, when we are doing well, the crops doing well, and if some of the women among the group is a very good cook, which they are, so there are a lot of good cooks among these women, and they're willing to share the recipe of these vegetables that we are growing. Then we have collaborated with No More Empty Pot, which have the commercial kitchen, and they have allowed these women to bring in their produce and cook the recipe. I know No More Empty Pot set up, they have a test kitchen, kind of like a test restaurant or a restaurant above the roof, and they can just test and give a feedback. If it's a go, then that would be another, another dish introduced into the American community.