Collaborating with three student organizations, local nonprofit Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture (WANDA) hosted a sisterhood supper to honor activist Georgia Gilmore and advocate for food justice in the Mary Graydon Student Center on Feb. 27.
WANDA, a local nonprofit, has been running sisterhood suppers in the DMV area since 2017. These community gatherings have brought over 500 families together to share a meal. This event was the first time the program had been brought to a college campus.
The focus around belonging at the University began the idea to bring sisterhood supper to college students. “Why not create that belonging around food with students here?” Tambra Raye Stevenson, WANDA’s founder and CEO, said.
This supper’s honoree, Georgia Gilmore, founded the Club from Nowhere, where Gilmore used cooking to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Each supper takes on a different theme, but they all center on topics of gender and food justice.
The supper has “really brought a whole community of people that really care about food activism [and] justice, as well as, fighting for food equality overall,” Danielle Adusei, a sophomore in the School of Communication and a WANDA intern, said.
Organizers rearranged a room on the third floor of MGSC to resemble a womb by moving tables and chairs into a half circle. According to Stevenson, the aim was to empower female leaders to become she-ros — a play on the word heroes — in their own community through food advocacy.
“When you think about the womb, it’s warm, it’s welcoming, it’s communal,” Stevenson said. “We are intentional in the spaces we create because … the space is designed to speak to the human elements [as] well,” Stevenson said.
Additionally, every sisterhood supper has a female-owned restaurant cater the event. For this event, it was the local Pan-African soul food restaurant Hezole, who served dishes including plantains and Ghanaian jollof.
“We need to see community as medicine,” Stevenson said. “When we come together in community, [we] actually become a force for change.”
Stevenson said she hopes those who attended will walk away with more knowledge to influence their voting and get involved with WANDA.
“At the very minimum, walk away with information around historical figures that they have not heard of but maybe can influence a future research paper or even pivot their whole focus in many ways,” Stevenson said. “Something like that could be transformative.”
This article was edited by Natalie Hausmann, Payton Anderson and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Avery Grossman, Jaden Maitland Anderson, Mattie Lupo and Ava Stuzin.
