Stronger Together
Aligned organizations we love and you can support
As BIPOC Foodways Alliance and Immigrant Kitchen expands and travels, we continue to meet amazing people doing incredible aligned work.
A few of the folks we love— consider checking them out and supporting them with your money, time, and attention as we move into the gift giving season:
RECETARIO PARA LA MEMORIA
As we continue to learn at Immigrant Kitchen, some memories are far too difficult to put into words, and that is when we enter the kitchen. This beautiful project collects the favorite family recipes of people who have disappeared in Mexico when they leave home to cross the border or in other acts of violence. Since 1964, more than 100,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, according to Mexico’s official registry of missing persons. In their book, mothers, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers compile favorite recipes of their loved ones as an act of remembering and enduring love. Seventy two families participated in the project, cooking the favorite recipe of their missing loved one.
League of Kitchens
Women from around the world teach culinary classes out of their homes as well as private spaces. League of Kitchens has also published a beautiful cookbook with the “tips and tricks” you’ll learn only in grandma’s kitchen. Check out these cute “Cook Like a Grandma” aprons. Online classes available, like this unique Burkinabé course, where you can learn peanut stew and ginger drink recipes from this West African country.
Immigrant Food
This delicious DC-based restaurant chain has a mission they call “gastroadvocacy,” using the restaurants to promote immigrant rights. The restaurants offer immigrant cooking from around the world, as well as community space for English language classes, legal clinics, job search services and more. Check out their newsletter for ways to engage and support.
Food 4 Good
This Dallas-based kitchen and organization empowers refugee women and survivors of domestic and other violence by providing them with economic opportunities for sharing their cultural cooking. Storytelling and gift boxes are part of their offerings in addition to catering.
Kitchens of Hope
Twin Cities based authors Linda S. Svitak, Christin Jaye Eaton and Lee Svitak Dean have recently published this great cookbook filled with immigrant recipes from more than 30 countries. The book is structured around personal stories and personal reasons for immigration. Two of the authors are lawyers who have worked in human and immigrant rights.
Voice of Witness & Sonic Tablecloth
Voice of Witness inverts the conventional wisdom of talking about “immigrants” and instead works to amplify the voices of the people actually affected by injustice. VOW works with the communities impacted to develop ethical storytelling. Projects include a book series, oral histories, and their upcoming project, Sonic Tablecloth, which uses interactive technology to incorporate audio from interviews into a tablecloth made from illustrated fabric. Activated through touch, participants will hear stories about food and connection.
Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness
Nico Williams [Cherokee] is a multitalented chef and musician who founded this Native-led communal space for the urban Tulsa Indigenous community to heal and grow around a teaching kitchen, teaching garden, a storykeeper lodge, a makers workshop, and many other food-centric programs. Go to their resources page to get more information on supporting other great Indigenous food sources, as well as opportunities for mutual aid like holiday meal kits prepared by community members.
Nixtamal/ Mr. Menu
I met Lucia Barrios on an extensive trip to Bolivia traveling to Indigenous food makers and knowledge keepers across the Altiplano, the most extensive high plateau on earth outside Tibet. The altitudes here are part of the reason Bolivia has been able to maintain much of its Indigenous cultures— it’s out-of-reach geography kept some colonization at bay. It was a fitting place to meet Lucia, who goes out of her way to showcase and rep women who continue honor their Indigenous cooking in her home country of Guatemala. Though Mr. Menu began out of a simple desire to create a restaurant guide in her hometown of Guatemala City, Lucia got the memo pretty quickly— women who are home cooks are the anchor to everything else. While most of their programming is out of Guatemala, Nixtamal is worth keeping an eye on for unique culinary travel experiences, Indigenous recipes, and more.
CAPI: Communities Advancing Prosperity for Immigrants:
Our wonderful board member (and December Immigrant Kitchen host!) Ekta Prakash helped grow this Minneapolis org that provides comprehensive support services for immigrants and refugees in the Twin Cities, including food & nutrition services, nutrition assistance for seniors, caregiver support, and more tailored services. Importantly, CAPI staff is made up of the communities it serves.
Green Card Voices
We’ve had a crush on Green Card Voices since we learned about their immigrant-authored graphic books, Story Stitch card game which intentionally creates vulnerability and builds empathy, and their excellent oral histories available on YouTube. As always, we believe that immigrant communities and people of color should have a platform to speak for themselves, and GCV cultivates this and much more.
Twin Cities Immigration Forum
Each week, TCIF hosts a free online forum updating invested parties on the most pressing immigrant rights issues of that week, including law and policy, and works to ensure that local immigrant communities have access to safety, dignity and opportunity. Last week’s agenda was focused on Trump’s announced plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali residents living in Minnesota. They unpack federal immigration developments, and share information about where to learn more and where to go for help. Great resource.
Alight
This organization works with directly with displaced people and refugees, helping to identify immediate needs in over 20 countries. Alight thinks of the people they serve as “customers,” rather than “beneficiaries.” We met our wonderful co-hosts Farzanah and Morsal, two recent refugees from Afghanistan, through an Alight volunteer. Find out how to help transplants like the recent influx of Afghani people to Minnesota through Alight.
If there is an organization who you would like us to add to this list, particularly if they serve immigrant and BIPOC people using food as a tool, please let us know. We will periodically update this list and republish it.
Thank you for supporting BFA, Immigrant Kitchen, and immigrant communities here and abroad!