Teens Cultivate Soil and Safety at the Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden

When the world is overwhelming, dangerous, or stressful, the Sankofa community farm serves as a space to educate and affirm.

This story is a part of a series in collaboration with Love Now Media for the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative.

Tucked on the edge of the Schuylkill River, Bartram’s Garden is dedicated to offering a home for horticulture, an ancient riverfront, and a place of untold histories to the broader Philadelphia Area. Despite being the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America, Bartram’s community farm, Sankofa, continues to serve as a resource for the younger generation. 

The Sankofa Community Farm Youth Internship intends to expose local high school students to African diasporic agricultural knowledge. Going into her second year with Bartram, it didn’t take long for Hawa Kamara to recall how she found out about the program. “Everything started when I was in class with my biology teacher, and I was thinking ‘What can I do to occupy myself during the summer?’” An all too familiar question for high school students, the internship seemed to answer. After finding out it was an agricultural program, Hawa had opinions. “The first thing that popped in my mind was muddy and being in mud.” However, despite her apprehensions, Hawa continued through the process of applying. She looked forward to the opportunity to meet new people and discover things about her ancestry and culture. 

This sentiment was echoed by one of her peers, Ain Dantzler. “It felt like it was easy for everyone to get comfortable very quickly. It’s such a great place to find your people and build a community.” Ain attributes her original attachment to the relationships she built. Hawa attends John Bartram’s High School, while Ain attends an online school. 

Without the program, it’s unlikely that the two would have even met, but they now have a community outside of home and school. Hawa professed gladly, “I feel more safe on the farm than in my own house.” She cited the reason for this as the community she has created there. She sees the farm as “therapy,” not only from the friendships she’s made, but the environment itself. “It’s so calming, the only problem there is just like… the heat.” Ain admits that the work gives her an outlet to do things that satisfy, affirming that “after dealing with hard situations [Sankofa] definitely helps me manage stress.” Their words reinforced the inevitability of the space. With anxiety being the most diagnosed mental health disorder among teens today, what Sankofa Community Farm is offering grows bigger than just the farm. 

Students in the program have the opportunity to be surrounded by plants and food that they nurtured to full development, in communion with other young people who are equally dedicated to discovery. Hawa described how the violence in her school environment compares to her time at the farm, “in Bartram’s, it’s just so calm… in school, they do the complete opposite. By recording [fights], telling each other to keep going, helping each other to fight.” She disappointedly recalled a time when a student brought a gun to school, describing the scene of endless cop cars and the impact on the students. Although gun violence in Philly is down, the number of juveniles charged with homicide has increased ninefold since 2016. What Hawa and her classmates experienced is not an isolated issue.

When asked about her ideal future, Ain expressed a dream for there to be more green spaces like Sankofa in other communities. While students across the city face the danger of violence and lack of empathy, Sankofa offers a solution. By planting the seeds of responsibility and sisterhood with these girls, they are mobilized to demand a difference in the city. 

This summer, Ain and Hawa will take on leadership roles on the farm by mentoring others through the program they have completed. Ain excitedly shared, “I feel like I am relied on not only as a farmer, but with the opportunities I’ve been given, possibly as a teacher for other people who want to make connections with the land.” Through the program, they have been given access to information that they can carry on to others in and outside of Sankofa, in an attempt to enact change for those who haven’t been granted it. Ain upholds the values she’s been given in the program and acknowledges their power, “I feel like specifically for Black and Indigenous communities farming can be a way of continuing traditions or reclaiming knowledge that might have been taken from us due to colonization or from slavery, which I would consider an act of justice.” Youth involved in the program are able to tap into an aspect of their identities often overlooked, or unprioritized in the face of all today’s hate and violence. 

Hawa and Ain understand the importance of what they’re doing and believe that all young people should be given the opportunity to do the same. Hawa’s vision for the future was simply “more land.” She cited how we celebrate holidays, but we don’t gather “to celebrate our earth.” Diverting energy from what we don’t have to enrich the existing has been a common theme in this work. Appreciating the history and fruitfulness of our planet and its people directly causes positivity and passion in the youth at Sankofa Community Farm. 

The stories of only two who have gone through the program proved inspiring, but many more have been assisted by the work being done at Bartram’s Garden. When the world is overwhelming, dangerous, or stressful, the Sankofa community farm serves as a space to educate and affirm. What our history, our community, and our planet have to offer is not dominated by negativity. Now more than ever, it is so important to stop and smell the flowers.

Photos by Azella Gardens