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 initiative demonstrates that sustainability extends beyond environmental stewardship to include economic opportunity, community resilience, and pathways to justice for returning citizens.
Abiodun Henderson is the Executive Director of the Come Up Project, which features an entrepreneurial business-training program, based in agriculture, for returning citizens called Gangstas to Growers. She has been a community organizer in Westside Atlanta for over 6 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.
Her organization strives to become self-sustainable which is why The Come Up Project has activated the Gangstas to Growers Cooperative. They have begun to produce their first product, a hot sauce called “Sweet Sol”, branded by our trainees. Working with farmers that are members of SWAG Cooperative and West Georgia’s Farmer’s Cooperative, G2G Coop will utilize their farms to produce everything needed. It ls 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.