Bridging Across Generations to Address Intergenerational Trauma

Khmer Maine takes a cross-generational, community-building approach to address the health disparities and barriers to food security experienced by the Cambodian community and other underserved communities in Maine. Because food already serves an important role in the community, food will be the vehicle to help educate and raise awareness about individual and community health.

Food & Farm Projects

  • Invest in culturally relevant and responsive cooking and nutrition classes, focusing on fresh foods, fruits, vegetables, and healthy eating habits to educate and help seniors and families both prevent and manage cardiovascular diseases such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and hypertension. Experts and clinicians will be consulted and invited to present at classes.

  • Invest in community-wide backyard gardening and growing project that connects youth and families with seniors. Youth particularly will have the opportunity to help seniors build and construct appropriate structures for growing, irrigation, and storage, and help plant fruits and vegetables for the seniors, for community redistribution, or for sale to local grocers to help seniors earn supplemental income.

  • Plan for and invest in classes that teach Cambodian and BIPOC entrepreneurs the ins and outs of starting a food-related business in Maine, including food safety and handling standards, application and licensing procedures, accessing capital and startup loans, and connecting with business advisors and programs on best practices for managing food-related businesses.

The Food & Farm Team

Chan Bunly Uy, Food & Farm Program Manager

Program Advisors: Chim Lev, Nathan Maddix, and Madeleine Weatherhead

Community Advisors: Pious Ali (Portland Empowered), Safiya Khalid (Community Organizing Alliance), Crystal Cron (Presente! Maine)

Why Food Matters

Food is the language of love and home in many cultures and is core to the development of one’s sense of belonging, identity, and place. For Cambodian Americans, especially refugee and immigrant populations, access to culturally relevant food means connecting to one’s roots, heritage, and memories. Lack of access to culturally relevant food on the other hand can trigger traumas and past experiences with food insecurity. Both access to and lack of culturally relevant foods are well-documented social determinants of health.

Intersections With Community Health

From a community health perspective, cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of death among Cambodian Americans, based on limited disaggregated data on the health of Cambodian American populations in California, Massachusetts, and New York. According to these studies:

  • Between 5.1% to 27.4% of Cambodian Americans reported having diabetes. 24.5% of Cambodian Americans have high cholesterol.1

  • Less than 50% have had their cholesterol checked.1 2

  • Only 16.4% of Cambodian Americans reported eating 5 or more fruits and vegetables daily, compared to 32.1% of aggregate Asian Americans and 24.4% of the general US population.1

Cambodian American refugee seniors in particular experience documented mental health disparities, including higher rates of depression, PTSD, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease than found in the general U.S. population. These issues are made exponentially worse by the social isolation Cambodian American refugee seniors experience due to cultural and language barriers and barriers to accessing reliable transportation to culturally relevant places of worship, stores, and community gatherings.

In addition, second and third-generation Cambodian American youth are considered at-risk because of the myriad of intersecting issues that correlate strongly with poor academic achievement and outcomes, leading to limited socioeconomic mobility and opportunities as adults.

Like many other children of immigrants and refugees, Cambodian American youth face intergenerational conflict as they grow up in schools, society, and culture that is very different from that of their parents and grandparents. These dynamics often create conflicts in terms of cultural values and strain parent-child relationships, which can affect academic performance and mental health and exacerbates the prevalence of intergenerational trauma related to the Cambodian genocide and migration. Another contributing factor is that Cambodian American youth are more likely to live in households experiencing poverty.