Interview with Tambra Raye Stevenson — Founder & CEO of Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics & Agriculture (WANDA) and Author of the “Where’s WANDA?” series.
Tambra Raye Stevenson is a native of Oklahoma with an extensive resume, that, at a glance, more than justifies the amazing work she is doing through her organization. Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics & Agriculture (WANDA)“ is a new initiative to develop the next generation of women and girls as leaders from farm to fork in the Diaspora and Africa.”
Born to Change
Tambra, among many titles, is a change maker and social entrepreneur with a strong dedication to her mission. Reflecting on her journey, originally aiming to work as a physician, she gave up medical school dreams to dedicate herself to public health nutrition and health communication. This new pursuit led to her working at the federal government level and eventually doing some groundbreaking work in her newfound city of Washington. D.C. as part of the Mayor’s office. It is in D.C. that she had the first taste of merging entrepreneurship with her community health work, giving birth to NativSol Kitchen, immersing herself into the various African communities of the city to learn about and also bring new perspectives and framing to the diets of these communities.
After attending an African Union Summit in Ethiopia themed around food security and agriculture and speaking as a guest at different institutions from West to South Africa in 2014, Tambra set her sights on channeling her interests and belief in the importance of preserving traditional diets into something concrete. In the summer of 2016, Tambra was in Nigeria to accomplish work that would eventually lead to the birth of WANDA.
WANDA
In northern Nigeria, Tambra’s work was centered on women and children, considering the great value women add to community nutrition as well as the responsibility they bear in terms of being the first “nutritionists” of their children. Thus she devised to rethink the concept of the kitchen from just being a place where cooking takes place to where a community’s well-being is rooted and its culinary traditions are immortalized. Being in Nigeria solidified Tambra’s belief in that, even though traditionally it is not hard for African women to ensure a healthy and adequate nutrition for their children when resources are present, increasingly, an unlikely culprit, urbanization, threatens the abandonment of traditional pillars of nutrition, leading people to turn towards less healthy and dangerous imported western foods. Tambra’s answer to this “nutrition transition” is WANDA, which she describes as “a way to make connections, embrace knowledge in tradition and engage different stakeholders.”
In order to communicate her message, Tambra chose to publish a book built around the character of little Wanda, a young inquisitive black girl who travels through Africa starting in Nigeria on amazing journeys to learn about different traditional foods and approaches to nutrition which she brings back home.
Where’s WANDA?
The “Where’s WANDA?” series is the flagship of IamWANDA.org. Tambra’s inspiration to create WANDA came from her own passion for creating stories with an inspiring character that her, as a child would have like to see and for her young daughter to be able to relate to. She set out to create a world “where women are beautiful, healthy, powerful and supported by men,” thus challenging the perceived status quo in the Diaspora and northern Nigerian communities especially related to farming and foodways while at the same time educating them. With the help of her magic apron, Little Wanda is able to transport herself to far-away lands where she returns having learned new knowledge about the great benefits of a certain traditional African food; knowledge which she teaches her grandmother who had forgotten how to cook due to years of relying on imported foods. Slowly, Wanda helps her community gain back its knowledge and her grandmother her health and strength. Thus Wanda’s adventures are as much a way to highlight the importance of traditional foods but also does an amazing job creating a world where black women and girls can see role models whom they can relate to. In fact, in the first publication of the book, Tambra features Mrs. Salamatu Garba, a productive community leader and developer in northern Nigeria empowering women in agriculture and food production and the head of WOFAN (http://wofan-ng.org/). She hopes to find such inspirational women to feature in future editions of ?”Where’s Wanda?”.
To the Future
The future looks bright for WANDA and its little heroine. Soon, the first publication of “Where’s Wanda?” will go into printing and available for public purchase by February 1 at iamwanda.org. Even though Tambra has made so much great progress, she is only getting started; and with the support of her team, she looks forward to accomplishing many more milestones in 2017. As WANDA ramps up, some great volunteer opportunities are becoming available within the organization. If you are interested in contributing to this amazing organization’s work, please feel free to email her at hello@iamwanda.org and visiting iamwanda.org.
