Tune into WOL 1450 AM, 95.9 FM or the WOL Livestream on Thursday, March 12 at 10:30 a.m. EST for Everything Co-op, hosted by Vernon Oakes.
This week, Everything Co-op continues its Women’s History Month series with Abiodun Henderson, Executive Director of the Come Up Project. Vernon’s conversation with Abiodun will explore how Henderson’s leadership of the the Come Up Project and its Gangstas to Growers Cooperative demonstrates that sustainability extends beyond environmental stewardship to include economic opportunity, community resilience and pathways to justice for returning citizens.
Gangstas to Growers (G2G) is a social enterprise focused on building worker-owned cooperatives that provide opportunities for employment, empowerment and entrepreneurship in agriculture for at-risk and formerly incarcerated youth. G2G’s mission is to end the cycle of poverty and recidivism, provide a space of healing and help support a Black-run food system.
Henderson has been a community organizer in Westside Atlanta for over six years and has experience in running grassroots programs, farming and empowering those living in traditionally underserved communities. Under her leadership as garden coordinator, the Westview Community Garden is now community owned after being bulldozed in 2015.
Abiodun also helped create and manage the Westview Empowerment STEAM Camp from 2013-2015. Besides working to reduce recidivism in Westside Atlanta by employing at-risk youth and formerly incarcerated individuals, she is a member of SWAG Cooperative, which aims to create a transformative environmentally and culturally responsible Atlanta food system that contributes to robust inequitable high quality of life for its farmers and community.
On its path to self-sustainability, the Come Up Project’s G2G initiative is producing their first product, a hot sauce branded “Sweet Sol.” The ingredients needed for production come from farmer-members of SWAG Cooperative and West Georgia’s Farmer’s Cooperative. The hot sauce is currently sold to restaurants and at farmer’s markets. Abiodun is a native Brooklynite who enjoys when her four-year-old son puts a fist in the air and yells, “Free Black people!” when they pass the city jail every morning.