New Director of People’s Grocery: “Growing food supported my personal transformation”

Wanda Stewart, the new Executive Director of Oakland, CA-based People’s Grocery wants all people, and Black people in particular, to understand the value of working the land and growing their own food. Since 2003, People’s Grocery has worked to promote health and community self-determination in order to revitalize the historically underinvested West Oakland neighborhood.

Stewart says growing her own food supported her personal transformation, bolstering her mental, physical, and spiritual health. “I know that if I can help others do that and if they get anything like what I’ve gotten from that action, we can really be changing the world,” says Wanda.

We might not be able to leave the food desert, but we can grow it in a different way.

In her experience as a gardener, teacher, and school administrator, Stewart has learned that people who grow their own food establish a deep relationship with the land, its products, and their own culture. That new relationship encourages people to prepare the food they have grown in a better way, so it is more nutritious and healthy. Wanda emphasizes that this can help people to overcome diet-related diseases.

Stewart thinks People’s Grocery can show West Oakland a way out of the food desert: “We might not be able to leave that desert,” she says, “but we can grow it in a different way so we have wonderful, healthy lives.”

Stewart is excited to be at People’s Grocery because it offers a way for people of color in West Oakland to transform their own food system. As part of the Oakland Food Policy Council (OFPC), People’s Grocery has the opportunity to share ideas with other food organizations, farmers, health advocates, and public school officials. Through OFPC they are part of an initiative that is transforming the food system to benefit the community, Stewart’s own community.