Rooted Together: A Refugee Youth-Led Greenspace Initiative

Friends of Refugees has served Clarkston's refugee and immigrant community for 30+ years. Our Jolly Avenue Garden has 93 gardening plots, a community soccer field, and houses youth programming, making it one of DeKalb County's most active multicultural green spaces. Yet the front half of the property — a large open field used daily for soccer and seasonally for community festivals — remains a blank slate. There are no shaded gathering spaces where families might linger, nor infrastructure that reflects the cultural richness of the people who call this place home.

Friends of Refugees seeks funding to transform this underutilized greenspace into a vibrant, community-designed recreational hub. Over two years, Pathfinders Youth will partner with landscape design professionals and community organizations to co-design and build recreational infrastructure that reflects the identities and priorities of surrounding families.

Youth will lead multilingual community events to gather input that shapes the design. Emerging ideas from this youth-led process include shaded gathering spaces, pollinator and native-plant habitats, creative art installations, a repurposed shipping container serving as a coffee and snack bar, and an outdoor classroom. The project emphasizes creative reuse of reclaimed materials and will be stewarded collaboratively by youth, staff, and community partners.

Year 1 will focus on community visioning, youth leadership development, and the initial installation of infrastructure, and Year 2 on continued implementation and youth-led storytelling to document and share long-term impact.

The result will be a publicly accessible, nonprofit-managed community park — permanently woven into the fabric of daily life in Clarkston.

The project will directly engage 85+ youth and their families, and an estimated 5,500–7,500 residents living within walking distance of Jolly Avenue Garden

Refugee and immigrant youth will move from recipients of services to designers of their community's future — gaining civic ownership in the process. A youth-designed gathering space will transform a vacant field into a shaded, welcoming park where thousands of nearby residents can safely gather, belong, and thrive.

Anticipated outcomes include:

• Increased youth agency and civic leadership among 85+ refugee and immigrant youth, measured through attendance tracking, leadership participation records, and youth self-reported surveys aligned with Pathfinders' Agency pillar.

• Increased community use and recreational activation of Jolly Avenue Garden, measured through multilingual community surveys, observational usage data, and participation tracking at community programming events held at the garden.

• Improved greenspace quality and sense of belonging among surrounding residents, measured through pre- and post-project community surveys, physical improvement tracking, and youth-led storytelling and reflection documenting shifts in how families experience the space.

Funding will support staff facilitating multilingual community engagement events, youth leadership development, participatory budgeting, and recreational programming that may occur outside standard program hours. Because Jolly Avenue Garden has served as a trusted community gathering space for 20 years, much of the organizational infrastructure—including staffing, community relationships, and established programming—is already in place. As a result, grant funds can primarily support capital improvements and community engagement activities rather than building capacity from scratch. 

Budgeted materials and infrastructure are designed to deliver lasting community and environmental benefits beyond the grant period. The project prioritizes sustainable community assets that enhance the quality of green spaces and ensure long-term access to safe, culturally welcoming recreational spaces for refugee and immigrant families. 

Following the grant period, Friends of Refugees plans to sustain ongoing community engagement and stewardship activities through existing Youth and Garden staffing, strengthened community partnerships, volunteer leadership, and integration into ongoing programming.  

We designed this project to create long-term community impact beyond the two-year grant period. The initiative is embedded within Friends of Refugees’ existing Youth and Garden programs, which already serve as trusted gathering spaces for refugee and immigrant families in Clarkston. Through investment in youth leadership development, outdoor learning, and participatory design, the project establishes a “train-the-trainer” model in which youth continue serving as mentors, advocates, and stewards within their communities long after the grant concludes.

The project prioritizes durable recreational infrastructure and community-centered spaces designed for long-term, low-maintenance use. Ongoing community events, multilingual programming, and partnerships will continue to activate the space and foster long-term community ownership. Because Friends of Refugees owns and manages the Jolly Avenue Garden property, all infrastructure improvements become permanent community assets integrated into daily programming and neighborhood life.

Friends of Refugees will sustain the project through existing staffing, volunteer engagement, garden programming, and organizational infrastructure already dedicated to youth development and community wellbeing. Additional support through partnerships, in-kind donations, volunteer labor, and future fundraising efforts will further strengthen the project’s long-term viability.

The physical transformation of the garden will also serve as visible evidence of what youth-led community development can produce: not only changed lives, but a more welcoming, connected, and activated community space. As part of FOR’s broader ecosystem of youth, garden, literacy, and family programming, the space will continue serving families well beyond the life of the grant.