Barbara Eiswerth

Iskashitaa Refugee Network

Dr. Barbara Eiswerth worked for a decade as a research geologist in a geobotany cohort before moving to Arizona in 1992. She holds a Ph.D. in Arid Lands Resource Sciences from the University of Arizona with a dissertation focused on geospatial information technologies in Malawi, Africa for environmental monitoring purposes. In 2003, she founded and continues to serve as the executive director of the Iskashitaa Refugee Network in Tucson, AZ. Iskashitaa is a community-based non-profit that provides innovative local food-focused programming and services to UN refugees from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. She and Iskashitaa helped designate and establish Tucson as an UNESCO City of Gastronomy, North America’s first such designated city.

Iskashitaa Refugee Network is Arizona’s only year-round gleaning program that is celebrating over 21 years of success in our community. Community integration is at the core, and food is the unifying vehicle. The network, made up of refugees, asylum seekers, and volunteers, called Iskashitaa means “working cooperatively together” from the first ethnic group with whom she worked, the Somali Bantu. The program boosts learning from and working with 69 different ethnic groups and harvesting and rescuing over 150 foods. Gleaning and rescuing has evolved from a few thousand pounds of fruit harvested to an annual harvest of over 50-75 tons of fruit, nuts, and vegetables from backyards and local farms and orchards. In addition, they have integrated food programming to include food safety, food handling, food rescue and food preservation to sell an assortment of jellies, jams, dried herbs and fruits, and marmalades on their online store called The IskaShop.