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Brownsville Youth Practice Haitian Principle ‘Kombit’ to Build Community Through Farming. Grow Brownsville, an initiative paying teens to enhance local agriculture, is hosting a Haitian “farming party.”

Vwazinaj se fanmi is a Haitian saying which translates to ‘the neighborhood is family.’

That’s the core belief of Universe City, an urban farming incubator in Brownsville which spent the past month working with young people to bring the latest farming technology to the community gardens of Brownsville and East New York.

The youth cohort, as part of the organization’s Grow Brownsville initiative, were paid $15 an hour (thanks to a grant from Beautify NYC) to install garden hoses, tree pits and automatic solar-powered irrigation systems in order to sustain and improve community gardens.

Universe City teaches Kombit, the traditional Haitian practice of community farming and mutual aid, and is, as Universe City Co-founder Alexis Mena defines it, a “farming party where everyone pitches in.”

“One of the intentions for the program was to support local community gardeners in doing what they do best, which is sustenance farming,” Mena said.