Ianne Fields Stewart spent last winter hatching up ideas to help her community through the holidays. “I get to go home and that’s a privilege,’” the New York-based actress and activist tells me. “Not all of my [Black trans] siblings get to find solace in family during this time.”
So a few days before Christmas, Stewart thought she would ask her friend, chef Meliq “Zaddy” August, to visit the homes of food insecure Black trans people in New York City and cook them a healthy meal at no cost. She took the idea to Nyla Sampson, the founder of the Black Trans Solidarity Fund, a reparations group that funnels resources toward Black trans folk, and asked if they could underwrite August’s house calls.
That initial concept became the core of the Okra Project, which aims to feed Black trans people in need by sending Black trans chefs to their homes to make a culturally specific meal. On the Wednesday before Christmas, Stewart announced the project and a call for donations on social media; by the following Friday, it had already raised over $6,000 — enough to feed about 66 home-cooked meals to food-insecure individuals. “Our anticipation was that we’d raise a thousand dollars at best,” Ianne tells me. “What we said from the beginning is, ‘I guess we’re going to do this ‘till the wheels fall off.’”
Since then, the Okra Project has grown in leaps and bounds, with Stewart and Sampson leading the charge as co-facilitators. (August and other members of the team have moved on to “bigger and better things,” Stewart tells me, but all previously involved coordinators and chefs are acknowledged on the project’s website.) Within the first couple months, the organization extended the reach of their direct services from New York City to Philadelphia, and they’ve introduced a myriad of other initiatives. There’s the International Grocery Fund, which allows any Black trans person in the world to receive $40 to purchase food after filling out a simple form, as well as the Okra Academy, a workshop that teaches Black trans folks how to cook. The organization has also hosted a variety of health, wellness, and beauty events called #ByOkra, helmed by the Okra Project’s Community Coordinator Nala Simone Toussaint. “Healing comes through those events,” she tells me. “All folks across [different] lived experiences can come together to have a conversation about what Blackness and transness means to them, all while being fed.”
Okra Project makes it a point to serve Black trans and gender non-conforming people because they face disproporationately high rates of poverty, homelessness, sexual assault, and unemployment, compared to their white trans counterparts — leading to the increased likelihood of food insecurity. These rates are compounded when it comes to Black trans women in particular; 38% of Black transgender women experience homelessness and extreme poverty, compared to 9% of non-transgender Black women. “When you have these multiple identities that have been oppressed, you don’t even get seen or heard,” Toussaint says. “What we are doing is making sure that [Black trans people] understand that they matter enough to have food in their stomach and to have a [decent] quality of life.”
