Story by Alexis Yeboah
Jalilia Abdul-Brown
When asked about the future of North Minneapolis, Jalilia Abdul-Brown paints a vibrant scene.
“For me it looks like investing in community, capacity building and partnering with community to lead empowerment and healing.”
To help her community reach that future, Jalilia has chosen food access as her vehicle of choice. She sees food as a vital cultural and communal tool, and a key part of disrupting violence and fostering positive change.
Jalilia’s organization, Change Starts with Community (CSWC), uses food as a path toward violence prevention — providing food, nutrition services and community violence intervention and prevention as well as mental health and substance use overdose prevention services. “This all starts with a healthy meal as an impetus for transformation,” she says.
Jalilia grew up in a family that faced food insecurity, trauma and violence. She worked hard to graduate with degrees in childhood psychology and administration of children, youth and family programs. Later, she took on a role as a Senior Violence Prevention Specialist at Hennepin County Medical Center. These elements of her story helped her see a direct tie between nutrition and trauma. In bed-side conversations with victims of gun violence, she often heard stories of homicides and thefts driven by young people seeking money for food. For this reason, Jalilia sees a community’s lack of access to healthful food as its own act of violence.
“How can a community be safe when thousands of neighbors don’t have access to the food they need?” Jalilia asks.
CWSC programming provides health, economic and nutrition support as a way to interrupt and intervene in domestic violence, because Jalilia understands that violence in the home and the community is often created by systemic disenfranchisement and lack.
CSWC’s two main programs are built on that idea. The food shelf works to eliminate hunger in North Minneapolis, providing residents in need with accessible food, and programming that promotes nutrition and healthy lifestyles.
The community violence intervention and prevention program serves young people and women of color or from marginalized communities, using food as a foundation to build togetherness and economic security. Through this work, CSWC provides mentorships and employment opportunities for women and girls, knowing that self-sufficiency can be a path that leads away from violence.
Jalilia lives by a traditional greeting common to the Maasai people of East Africa: Casserian Engeri, which translates to “How are the children?” Through this concept, she envisions a Minneapolis that breaks down the distinction between community and individual — a city where people show up and get involved in the lives of the young people in their communities.
“You can change violence,” she says. “But we can only do it together, and if we show up together.”
The call to action is clear: to act in the spirit of inciting good change. “Public safety in Minneapolis looks like everyone in our community, from our seniors down to our youth, feeling safe, alive and free to thrive,” Jalilia says. “That's my goal. That's my mission. And I won't stop believing that we can reach it.”