Food can be both nourishing and nurturing, particularly if you’re far from home. Four students have developed a plan to secure the long-term success of a social enterprise that helps African refugees and migrants settle in Australia by providing access to traditional vegetables.

“Everybody wins from this. The community organisation gets a useful, carefully prepared report and the students get to put their skills to work.”

Forty kilometres north-west of Sydney’s CBD sits a little slice of Africa. The African Food Project is set on approximately six acres of farmland in Schofield. Here, the clay soil is covered with cassava, sweet potato, pumpkin, ground peanuts, okra, rosella and amaranth – a vegetable that African Food Project Founder, Mbuyi Tshielantende, calls “African spinach”.

Tshielantende, who came to Australia on a humanitarian visa in 2004 after fleeing his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo seven years earlier, knows all too well the challenges faced by African migrants.

Put simply, Tshielantende says, “When you come to another country, you get lost.” In addition to language and cultural barriers, there are dietary differences too.

“We eat meat and fish, but Africans generally prefer vegetables and the most common vegetable is cassava leaves.”

Just like the rest of Tshielantende’s crops, fresh cassava is difficult to find in Sydney. That’s why, in 2008, he started the African Food Project. The social enterprise aims to unite Sydney’s ethnic communities through food and to assist African migrants to feel settled in Australia, “their second home”, by growing and selling their traditional produce.

According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s Settler Arrivals report, during 2008 and 2009, 14 828 Africans entered Australia. With 3498 settling in NSW, there are plenty of people to help.

Supported by Boronia Multicultural Services and with funding from Parramatta City Council, in the past two years Tshielantende has begun growing and selling the small number of harvested crops to local African migrants and refugees.

However, as a former mining engineer, Tshielantende’s knowledge of Australian business regulations is limited.

To ensure the long-term success of the project, last year, Boronia Multicultural Services contacted Shopfront – UTS’s community program – for help in developing a sustainability plan.

The task was taken up by four Master of Business Administration (MBA) students – Fotis Kalis, Kanth Gudipudi, S Venkatesh Mohan Rao and Jayamohan Venicatakrishnan – as a project for their Management Consulting subject.

They were supervised by Lecturer in the School of Management, Natalia Nikolova, and former School of Management Lecturer, Ian Douglas.

Douglas, who originally designed the subject, left UTS in 2007 but returned last year to mentor Nikolova in how to run the subject.

According to Kalis, the decision to take on this assignment was easy.

“We almost unanimously had an attachment to the African Food Project. The other three guys are of Indian descent and I’m of Greek background, so we all have a migrant story and that’s what really sparked our interest.

“The brief was to develop something that would allow the African Food Project to put into place a more structured organisation and would allow them to take their food to the next step.”

Over the 12-week Spring semester, the students created a document that covered corporate governance, risk management and business processes. Tshielantende and Boronia Multicultural Services Manager, Isaac Kisimba, are now using the step-by-step plan to structure the non-profit organisation.

“The document is very good and all the things they put in it, we are only now in the process of implementing,” says Kisimba. “It’s a very big document that cannot be implemented in one year or a few months, so we need to take it gradually.”

“The project itself I think is really interesting and valuable,” says Douglas. “To bring together an African migrant community, a lot of which is refugee based, is already such a wonderful story, but for them to then engage with a group of students from Europe and India in the MBA environment, and for everybody to get such positive outcomes from that experience as well, that was truly exceptional.”

The praise is echoed by Kalis. “I think it challenged us in ways that we didn’t expect. It was a culmination of all my studies into this final subject and I felt that I really got to use what I’d learnt across my Masters.

“It was one of the most worthwhile subjects I’d completed because of the ability to deliver something to a real client.”

Douglas believes part of the success can also be attributed to Shopfront’s application process. “Shopfront’s really careful only to take on projects from not-for-profits that would otherwise be unable to secure that sort of consultancy. So they’re not about getting students to do cheap labour.”

What the students do receive is real-world experience. For international students, like those who worked on the African Food Project, the benefits can be amplified.

“Many of them don’t have work experience, especially international students, and for them this is the first real work experience where they get to use their business knowledge,” says Nikolova. “For them it’s like a revelation – ‘yes what I have been investing in the last three years does have some value’.”

Douglas agrees. “They get an insight into Australian life that would never have come otherwise. It’s an experience of exposure to this country, this culture, they would have never seen in a classroom environment.

“Everybody wins from this. The community organisation gets a useful, carefully prepared report and the students get to put their skills to work.”

Ultimately, Tshielantende and Kisimba believe the plan will help them secure more funding, employ disadvantaged people and develop better distribution channels for the farm’s produce. The first step, however, is to establish an advisory committee to help guide the project into the future.

“This is only the second year. The first year it was just securing the land and finding a farm hand,” says Kisimba. “This is the second year where Tshielantende has been extending the farm. Now he’s testing for the first time and trying to challenge the market.”

It promises to be an exciting future for the social enterprise, which currently relies on government funding, donations of money and agricultural materials, and volunteers to help Tshielantende and his casual farmhand harvest the crops.

They are hopeful, however, that in addition to supporting the local African community, the project will help all Australians better appreciate African foods and cultures.

“All Australians enjoy going to an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant. Maybe in the future we will have an African restaurant and people will be going to the African restaurant and enjoying the food,” says Kisimba.

“So that is the aim; it’s not only targeting the African community, we’re targeting everyone. Because when the shop is open, it’s not only open for Africans, it’s open for everyone.”

Fiona Livy – Marketing and Communication Unit

Photographer (M Tshielantende): Fiona Livy
Photographer (F Kalis): Joanne Saad

To find out more about Shopfront and their collaboration with Business’ Management Consulting elective, visit the Business21C website.

Source: UTS:Newsroom

A HECTARE in Schofields has been transformed into a piece of Africa where cassava, roselle and peanuts will soon grow.

Blacktown Congolese migrant Mbuyi Tshielantende’s dream of farming African vegetables was well and truly alive last Thursday week when a busload of volunteers helped him plant fields of pumpkin leaves, sweet potato leaves, peanuts, cassava, roselle (from the hibiscus family and thought to be native to West Africa) and cow peas.

Amaranth and okra were already beginning to grow.

“The number one is cassava leaves. It’s very popular in the African community,” he said.

“We eat the leaves as vegetables. For us vegetables are leaves.”

It’s hoped the African vegetables will flourish in the hot, dry climate.

The 61-year-old, who has been renting the plot of land since the Advocate ran a story seeking community help, was finally able to get stuck into some real farming with the purchase of a tractor.

Mr Tshielantende could be seen chugging up and down the field in his second-hand Ford diesel after the Department of Community Services gave him a $68,000 grant.

“Now we start production,” he said, proudly seated in his blue tractor.

Several community services students from Granville Tafe helped Mr Tshielantende plant pumpkin seeds.

There were also numerous members of Blacktown’s African refugee community who regularly volunteered to help “Papa Mbuyi”.

Mother-of-six Justine Ndayi, 31, planted roselle leaves with her youngest, four-month-old Elizabeth, strapped to her back with a colourful cloth, just like they do in Africa.

“It’s not only about food and vegetables. It’s something we all like that brings us together,” she said.

She said some of the African vegetables were available at markets, but “Papa Mbuyi’s” would be fresh like in Africa.

In Africa, they used a forked stick to get the plant deep into the ground.

James Okot and fellow Sudanese refugees planted a field with cassava stems. Two roots were planted in a shallow hole in a cross so the plant had room to sprout from both ends.

“I’ve been planting this since I was little. It’s a part of life in Sudan,” Mr Okot said.

When the Advocate first met Mr Tshielantende at the beginning of 2008, he was jobless, broke and surviving on rice.

“I was looking for a job but now I have my own job. It’s not just for me alone,” he said. “Two or three people can benefit from this job.”

The dream grew into the African Food Project when Holroyd Parramatta Migrant Services came on board.

It’s hoped the project will not only provide fresh vegetables to local African communities, but supply employment to fellow refugees down the track.

Next Mr Tshielantende said he needs to find a shop to sell the home-grown vegies.

Source: Blacktown Advocate

An African refugee’s story gives meaning to the phrase ‘comfort food’, writes Nick Galvin.

There is a corner of a field in north-west Sydney that will be forever Africa – at least to the man who farms it.

“When I come here, I feel home,” says Mbuyi Tshielantende, leaning on his hoe. “It’s a little Africa.”

Tshielantende is a small, stocky man with the energy and appearance of someone much younger than his 61 years. In a lilting accent shot through with the French of his native Congo, he explains his vision for the 1.6 hectares at Schofields, near Rouse Hill.

It’s early days but the African Food Project aims to supply traditional African vegetables to Sydney’s growing community of migrants from the region. Ultimately, Tshielantende wants to introduce Australian palates to the cuisine of the Congo and beyond.

“We would like to let all Australian communities know about African vegetables,” Tshielantende says.”When these vegetables will be in the shop, it will be not only for African people but for all people.”

He points out the different seed crops as we walk across the red dirt. It’s 8am and the day is promising to be a scorcher.

He is growing cassava, okra and rosella, as well as sweet potato, pumpkin and four varieties of amaranth, which he calls “African spinach”.

Very little goes to waste. The leaves of the pumpkin and sweet potato, for instance, are integral to many dishes, as are those of cassava.

“Cassava is the most popular vegetable for big families,” Tshielantende says. “We eat the leaves and the tuber.”

Cassava is used in dishes such as chikwanga, where it is pounded into a paste and wrapped in leaves, and moambe, a hearty stew.

Tshielantende began the project last March and started planting in October. So far there are about 10 varieties of vegetables but he hopes to expand when he can obtain the seed. Importing seed is difficult and made doubly so by requirements for the scientific names of plants often known only by their traditional names.

Arriving in Australia as a humanitarian refugee, it was impossible for Tshielantende to practise his mine engineering profession because of the language barrier and his age.

Instead, he pursued a lifelong ambition to farm and enrolled at Richmond TAFE to study agriculture. With the support of Holroyd Parramatta Migrant Services and Parramatta City Council, plus income from part-time work as a cleaner, he set up the African Food Project.

Tshielantende says that for anyone living away from their native country – particularly refugees – food is an important and comforting link to “home”.

“Everyone feels comfortable with their traditional food,” he says. “It’s only natural – and African people are no exception.”

Tshielantende has more reasons than most to miss his birthplace – he was forced to leave behind his six children when he fled the Congo in 1992.

In 1992 he was doing prospecting work when he was cut off from his family, about 600 kilometres, away by rebels.

“My family received the news that I was dead,” he says. “Then there was no communication.

“I was told that if I didn’t escape I would be kidnapped and killed, so I escaped from Congo to Uganda and I spent about five years in a refugee camp there,” he says.

It was only once he came to Australia, 12 years after being separated from his family, that he was able to make contact with them again. Now he is going through the process of getting humanitarian visas for his children (Tshielantende’s wife died two years ago).

“Things do not seem to be very quick,” he says.

In the meantime, he has the food project to keep him busy.

“The problem is now I need some support to make it sustainable,” Tshielantende says.

“Not really in terms of money but I need equipment. I need a tractor to manage all this land – I cannot do it with just a hoe.”

Not that he’s asking for a new machine – an old tractor would do the job, he says.

With a tractor, Tshielantende says he would be able to give employment to others.

“I need to employ maybe two or three people but if I don’t have the money, I can’t do that – that’s the problem,” he says. “I don’t know which way I can convince the Government and some authorities to give me even a loan as I am not working full-time.”

The sun is high in the sky by the time we finish discussing the project. We depart and Tshielantende returns to tilling his field of dreams with a quiet determination that’s inspirational.

The African Food Project can be contacted by email at mbuyitshielantende@yahoo.fr or phone, 0425 330 222.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald