Bhutanese Atlantans repurpose "the vine that ate the south"

Guest author: Tamar Orvell

Atlanta Bhutanese Refugee Support Group volunteers and friends have been promoting our new Bhutanese neighbors in a collective enterprise that helps them to feed their families. Here’s the recipe.

• Step 1. Harvest local scourge, kudzu, growing around their apartment complexes.
• Step 2. Using ancient artisan techniques, weave the vines into one-of-a-kind baskets, wreaths, and custom-ordered products.
• Step 3. Sell the products at the Morningside Farmers' Market and other markets, fairs, houses of worship, community events, and shops.
  

Watch the video (4:31 minutes).



More information
See photos here and here of kudzu basket weaving demos and sales at the Morningside Farmers' Market. For basket orders and inquiries, send an email. For background on Bhutanese refugees in Atlanta, visit the links in the right column of this site, Bhutan > Atlanta. 

Related posts and news articles

• The Support Group: Our Story
• Bhutan refugee finds Shangri-La in Atlanta
• Teen rises up as go-to guide for refugees from Bhutan
  
• Atlanta’s Bhutanese refugees and their new neighbors
• Maimonides and the Ladder of Charitable Giving

Cross-posted at Only Connect.

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• Tutoring Bhutanese Teens: Project Launched
• The Support Group: Our Story
• Teen rises up as go-to guide for refugees from Bhutan
  

Tutoring Bhutanese Teens: Project Launched

Seven teens and three Emory College students met today to explore the teens' learning needs and ways to address them through tutoring resources.

Twins Bishnu and Birendra Odari hosted teens from Birch Grove and Valley Brook Apartments and their Emory tutors: Billy Zhang, Cherylene Ng, and Ying Long. We welcome more teens at our next engagement, Sunday, October 25, 3:45 pm, at the Odari home.

Working in small focus groups, areas of specific needs surfaced:

• SAT preparations
• Vocabulary building
  
• Reading comprehension
• American literature, specifically Arthur Miller's The Crucible
• College: preparing, researching, applying
  

Everyone was excited to begin to identify the issues formally and to tackle them systematically with the guidance of exceptional and charming volunteer tutors.

See Study Resources for practical tools and reference materials that the tutors, teens, and others suggest.

For more information, contact Tamar Orvell.