Entrepreneurs and sisters Arvelisha Woods and India Pernell are using their newfound earnings for a greater cause. Woods and Pernell are the co-founders of Kansas City, MO-based venture Mattie’s Foods, which was inspired by the hours of cooking in the kitchen with their grandmother, Mattie, their company website mentions. These types of moments with family sowed seeds of creativity and empathy, motivating Woods and Pernell to extend their passion for cooking to uplift their communities. “We would often enter her kitchen to find limited supplies in the fridge and pantry, yet Mattie’s magic would transform those ingredients into nourishing, flavorful meals. Her ingenuity and loving heart instilled in us a powerful lesson: by the grace of God we can create abundance from little to touch people’s lives,” a statement on the company website read. It continued, “Driven by love and gratitude, we opened Mattie’s Foods with a mission to pay homage to the remarkable woman who had shaped our...

Developer Rodney Anderson has established a grocery store in a town that had been a food desert for nearly 50 years.

A Black-owned grocery store has provided great relief to a town in Indiana.

When Shellie-Ann Kerns left her home in Jamaica to join her husband in Washington State, she wasn’t sure what to expect. They moved to his family farm in Gray’s Harbor and she immediately began imagining ways to make the land productive. Family Roots “Farming for me, it’s in my blood on my mother’s side, and from her great grandmother, all the way down. My father’s family is also agricultural,” she said. “It’s something that I understand how it works. Something that I’ve just always been passionate about. When I came here, it was winter. And I needed to plant something. I did some research and I saw that, ‘hey, you can plant garlic in the middle of winter.’” Her first batch of garlic did so well that Kerns continued to plant garlic every winter. Now she’s taking her farming up a notch and making it a community affair. For her, farming is about supporting her community on a basic level. Decolonizing The Food System “What’s really driving me is the ability to feed the community,”...