Good food warms the heart and feeds the soul. The idea of that connection between food and sharing led Aisse Kane and Awa Kaba to create Flavorful Inc., a catering service of Afro-fusion food in Gainesville, and work on different initiatives to combat food insecurity.
“The more we work together and share together, the better we are as a community and the stronger we are,” Kane said.
One of those initiatives is the “Recipes for Belonging" event, which is being organized by the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative known as GINI. The organization will be awarded a third round of funding from Welcoming America’s “Fund to Foster Belonging” to fund the event, which is meant to tackle food insecurity in immigrant and non-immigrant communities of Gainesville.
Ethan Maia de Needell, the Immigrant Program Manager for GINI, said this year’s event would expand on the aspect of sharing cultures and focus on connecting with local communities in need, such as those in rural Alachua County and east Gainesville.
Flavorful Inc. is the kind of local group GINI seeks to work with. Kane and Kaba started Flavorful Inc. in 2021 as a small food vendor, and over time it became a catering company with its own line of spices, condiments, vinaigrettes and juices.
Kane and Kaba joined the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative after collaborating with their food and culture in its event “The Community That Eats Together, Stays Together” in June 2023.
Local organizations like GINI and community members are working together to empower and provide for communities affected by food deserts and lack of resources.
Alachua County had a food insecurity rate of 11.1 in 2021, according to the Florida Department of Health, compared to Florida’s overall 10.6 rate.
This year, GINI will be awarded its third round of funding from Welcoming America’s “Fund to Foster Belonging.” GINI will use the funds for a project titled “Recipes for Belonging,” to tackle food insecurity in immigrant and non-immigrant communities of Gainesville. Ethan Maia de Needell, the Immigrant Program Manager for GINI, said this year’s event would expand on the aspect of sharing cultures and focus on connecting with local communities in need, such as those in rural Alachua County and east Gainesville.
“We'll be working with community leaders in these areas [...] to find locations that are actually relevant to the participants and not just have it somewhere where they won't be able to access it later on,” de Needell said.
The location of these events is intentional, de Needell said, since they are historically resource-scarce and resource-deprived areas of the city and the county. The events will consist of a group working together with local chefs to learn about their different cultural dishes and healthy food options in Gainesville. Groups will then use what they learn to create their own dish.
De Needell said he wants these events to connect both immigrants and non-immigrants in the community to share their traditions and learn about healthy food resources. He also hopes to include an artistic aspect for participants to express what they have earned and how they use food to celebrate their culture.
The event will also have different language resources, with translators in Spanish, French and Arabic, he said.
Lola Pak, the communications director for the nonprofit Welcoming America, said GINI is the only nonprofit in Gainesville receiving funding awards from them. GINI's event in 2023 was funded through a $7,000 award, and this year GINI had to submit a new project proposal for approval by Welcoming America, she said.
The national nonprofit organization has multiple initiatives to connect with local nonprofits and government agencies across the country. The “Welcoming Network” means to create a bridge between immigrants and non-immigrants to help fill in resource gaps, Pak said.
“There [are] shared problems and shared solutions between immigrant and non-immigrant communities […] and solutions don’t need to be found in siloes,” Pak said.
Gainesville’s population of more than 145,000 is 21.9% Black or African American, 12.1% Hispanic or Latino and 8.4% who identify with two or more races, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Underserved communities in Gainesville have in common that they all want to create awareness of the lack of resources, and they all want to work toward filling those gaps, too, said Hatdrika Monroe, a 30-year-old Gainesville native who lives in the Duval neighborhood in east Gainesville.
East Gainesville has an abundance of “food swamps,” according to a 2023 report from the Free Grocery Store, a mutual aid food pantry and garden. Food swamps are areas with high access only to poor-quality food, according to the report.
To combat these resource issues, Monroe created Swarthy East GNV, a for-profit, grassroots organization that works to bring awareness to food disparities on the east side and promote sustainable food accessibility and local initiatives. The organization purchased its own farmland and with local growers, they provide produce and crops for healthy eating.
“We want to be sustainable and we want to be resilient,” Monroe said.
Although she currently lives in Arkansas, Monroe said she travels back and forth to Gainesville to stay connected with her community. Since she has the means to help the community, she said she wants to give everything she can to empower and ignite other community members to feel that same sense of responsibility and commitment.
Swarthy East GNV will collaborate with GINI for this year’s event on healthy foods and cultural recipes. The organization will provide produce for health-conscious meals, Monroe said, and she hopes to contribute to the event’s creative aspect by bringing the perspective of arts and culture from the east side.
Aside from tackling issues in the community, local organizations work together in these events and initiatives to create a connection between the different underserved communities. Awa Kaba and Aisse Kane said they hope to bring this sense of connection to these events by sharing food and cultural experiences with their West African recipes.
When working with initiatives meant to help with disparities, Kane said she makes sure to leverage actors in the community who can work together to provide the right solutions for their problems. She said there is value in sharing food and stories with the community because people from different cultures can understand and empathize with each other through those experiences.
“The more you share, the more you learn about the other country, the more you understand that you cannot do a one-size-fits-all and you cannot put everybody in the same box,” she said.
Although they come from the same culture, Kane and Kaba grew up in France and Canada in different settings. But these differences have taught them about the importance of sharing and being open-minded about different cultures, Kaba said. The experience of sharing often helps people see each other as simply humans and not by their cultural labels.
“It’s a way to have everybody together, to break barriers and to allow everybody to know each other,” Kaba said.