By 
As Corey O’Neal measures ingredients in Sankofa’s community kitchen, her grandmother looks on.
The 13-year-old loves to cook. She dreams of opening a café one day and is known among family and friends for her almond sugar cookies and pralines. But her interest in cooking started with a question: How could she help her grandfather eat healthier after he was diagnosed with diabetes?
While living with her grandparents, O’Neal watched her grandfather manage the disease. Wanting to help, she began researching diabetes-friendly recipes and accompanied her grandmother to the grocery store in search of healthier ingredients.
Years later, when her family visited Sankofa’s Fresh Start Market and noticed a children’s cooking demonstration, they signed up her younger brother. O’Neal tagged along. Before long, she had graduated to the adult cooking classes.
As she learned more about healthy food and nutrition, O’Neal began to understand that what had once felt like a family challenge was something many people in her community experienced. Finding affordable, healthy food wasn’t always easy in the Lower 9th Ward.
Groceries closer to home
For generations, residents of the Lower 9th Ward have had limited access to places that offer nutritious, fresh food. Even before Hurricane Katrina, buying quality and affordable groceries often meant leaving the neighborhood and crossing bridges, train tracks and parish lines to reach a full-service supermarket with an abundance of fresh produce. Depending on where they lived, residents might travel several miles each way for fresh food — a quick errand for someone with a car, but a significant burden for families without reliable transportation, older adults and those relying on public transit. After the storm, when the neighborhood lost many businesses and much of its population, accessing healthy food became even more difficult.
“I always had to shop outside of our community,” said Dr. Daphne Ferdinand, a registered nurse and executive director of Healthy Heart Community Prevention Project. A lifelong resident of the Lower 9th Ward, she now serves as an advisor to Sankofa. “Even when I was a kid living with my parents, we’d have to travel to St. Bernard Parish or to Gentilly to shop for fresh produce.”
The challenge extends far beyond a single neighborhood. Louisiana consistently ranks among the states with the highest rates of child food insecurity in the nation.
In the years after Hurricane Katrina, residents came together to imagine what rebuilding could look like. Among them was Ferdinand’s daughter, Rashida Ferdinand, who was also raised in the Lower 9th Ward and established Sankofa Community Development Corporation (CDC).
“We were inspired by each other and driven by possibility,” Rashida Ferdinand said of those early years. “We operated from a visioning space — imagining what could be rebuilt and how to reclaim our space in community.”
With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that vision grew from a monthly community marketplace to a weekly farmers market and finally the development of the Sankofa’s Fresh Start Market, a green grocery where residents can purchase healthy foods daily and close to home.
Today, the Fresh Start Market is more than a green grocery store. It is a gathering place where residents share knowledge, build relationships and invest in the next generation. It’s also where O’Neal continues learning skills she hopes to share with others one day.
The land he grew up on
A few miles away, Keith Craft walks the trails of Sankofa Wetland Park and Nature Trail.
“When the swamp dried up, it felt like something was stolen from us,” he said.
Craft has known this land since the 1950s. As a child, he caught crawfish, crabs and gar fish there. His family ate what he brought home. The wetlands were more than scenery; they were part of daily life.
“We even used the trees for lumber,” he said.
Like many residents, Craft watched the neighborhood change dramatically over the decades. After Hurricane Katrina, much of the surrounding area sat vacant. The land that would eventually become the wetland park became an illegal dumping site.
In 2014, Sankofa CDC began planning a legal agreement with the City of New Orleans to restore this public property into the Sankofa Wetland Park & Nature Trail, working in partnership with community stakeholders, environmental scientists, wetland ecologists, landscape architects and civil engineers. With funding from the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans to develop an innovative green infrastructure model, Sankofa worked with its team to remove invasive trees and plant native species that support wildlife habitats in the area. The Wetland Park opened in 2017.
Today, Craft shares stories and knowledge with the next generation. School groups visit to test water quality, learn about coastal restoration and explore a landscape many had never experienced before.
The trails are once again home to wildlife he hadn’t seen since childhood.
Passing it forward
While born 60 years apart, Craft and O’Neal are both helping the next generation understand what it means to care for a community.
Craft shares with young people how the wetlands once sustained the neighborhood. O’Neal is preparing to pass on her learnings on ways to make simple, heart-healthy meals. Both are carrying forward knowledge rooted in care for their community.
Their work reflects a larger story unfolding across the Lower 9th Ward.
Dr. Daphne Ferdinand remembers leaving the neighborhood to buy groceries. Rashida Ferdinand helped create a place where families can access healthy food closer to home. Craft is helping restore knowledge of the land and waterways that shaped the community for generations. O’Neal is already imagining how she can share what she has learned with others.
Soon, O’Neal will lead her first cooking class. A few blocks away, Craft will continue sharing his experiences with visitors to the wetlands, pointing out wildlife he hadn’t seen there since childhood.
O’Neal already has a name picked out for the café she hopes to open one day.
“The Storybook Cafe,” she said. “It’s mainly cookies because that’s my main niche. But there’s also pies and different treats and pralines. I’ll be good at pralines, too!”
In the Lower 9th Ward, rebuilding after Katrina has never been only about restoring places. It has also been about passing knowledge, opportunity and responsibility from one generation to the next.
From the community kitchen to the wetlands, that work continues every day — one recipe, one lesson and one neighbor at a time.
Explore more
- Sankofa
- Food Insecurity Report Brief. Feeding America
- Making Groceries: Food and Nutrition Insecurity in New Orleans
- Healthy Corner Store Initiative
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