WANDA marks ten years with a Juneteenth week anchored to Edna Lewis's 1976 cookbook and America's 250th; the release names a Food Shero Freedom Fund for the WANDA Scholars Program but discloses no disbursements, no scholars, and no selection process.
A decade-old Black-women-led food organization is using this Juneteenth to ask the country to share a milestone that already has two other anniversaries crowded into it. WANDA, the group says, stands for Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics, and Agriculture. It is marking ten years with a week of programming, a Sisterhood Supper at a Washington farm, and a "Food Shero Freedom Fund" that the press release distributed through PR Newswire describes in name but not in dollars, alumni, or decision-makers. The questions the release does not answer are the story.
WANDA Week is scheduled for June 14 through 20, 2026, with the 6th Annual Sisterhood Supper: Juneteenth Celebration as the culminating outdoor event on Saturday, June 20, at the Farm at Kelly Miller in Washington, D.C. The menu, the release says, is Edna Lewis-inspired and prepared by WellBody Kitchen. The week also includes the Grocery Retail for All Summit, framed in the release as an education and advocacy track. The 2026 theme is "Rooted in Joy and Justice," and the organization describes the week as both a celebration and a "correction" of the national food story.
The release leans on two other anniversaries to fill the same week. The 50th anniversary of Edna Lewis's 1976 cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, falls in 2026, and 2026 is also the 250th anniversary of the United States. WANDA uses that second timing to argue that the country's food history has long overlooked Black women's labor. Edna Lewis was a late Virginia chef whose cookbook is treated in the release as a touchstone for an African American food tradition that has been written out of national restaurant culture.
WANDA Week as a formal designation is younger than the organization. The release says the Mayor of Washington, D.C. first proclaimed WANDA Week in 2022, which means the official "WANDA Week" recognition in the District is four years old even as the Sisterhood Supper is in its sixth year. Contributions to the Food Shero Freedom Fund are framed in the release as the week's main call to action, and the fund is said to support the WANDA Scholars Program.
That is the part of the release that does the least explaining. The WANDA Scholars Program is named, and the Food Shero Freedom Fund is named as its financial backer. The announcement does not state how much money the fund has raised or disbursed, who decides which scholars receive support, how many scholars have completed the program, or where past cohorts are now. For a ten-year anniversary framed as a moment of national correction, the silence on the program's measurable footprint is the most newsworthy thing in the announcement.
The Edna Lewis 50th anniversary, the Sisterhood Supper's six-year run, the 2016 founding of WANDA, and the 2022 mayoral proclamation are all statements drawn from the organization's own press distribution, not independently verified history. The release identifies Tambra Raye Stevenson as Founder and CEO of WANDA. A reader looking to sort a brand that has survived the decade from a pipeline that has changed the food and agriculture field will need to look past this release to do it.
What to watch over the next week: the Sisterhood Supper on June 20 at the Farm at Kelly Miller, any independent reporting on the 2022 mayoral proclamation, and any data the organization publishes, or is asked to publish, about the Food Shero Freedom Fund's actual disbursements and the post-program trajectories of WANDA Scholars.