Give the Gift of Grace & Greens

Why: We are a world in need of real and good news – and tangible ways to help. We hunger for good news that fresh herbs and vegetables, compassionate community, faith in the Holy Spirit’s creativity, trust, and mutual aid matters and is being raised at Okra Abbey in Pigeon Town, New Orleans!

How to Give:

Step 1:

• Give A Day of Grace & Greens for $200, to celebrate a Birthday, Anniversary, Easter, Graduation, a “Thank You for Being You”.
• OR Give A Month of Grace & Greens for $800, to support this unique community with compassion & nourishing meals!

Step 2:

• We encourage you to give this gift of nourishment and love to celebrate or thank someone in your life. Please print & share the Okra Abbey story when you tell them about a gift given to celebrate & give thanks for them.
• If you give a day or month of Grace & Greens with no specific designation, your generosity will be joyfully acknowledged at Okra Abbey, and through our deep gratitude to you.

The Story of Grace & Greens:

Sometimes the unpredictability of New Orleans is our greatest gift. It all started in 2009 in a school garden built for the education of children at the James W. Johnson Elementary School in Pigeon Town. Members of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian church helped nurture this emerging school garden project until one day in 2015… the school closed. The vision for the garden & investment from the previous school partners ran into what looked like an ending, but little did we know this was just the beginning of a new chapter. In stepped Layne Brubaker, Director of the Young Adult Volunteer program in New Orleans who had been supporting a young volunteer who was acting as a lead gardener for the project. Rather than despair, they saw an opportunity to expand the scope of the project by establishing the site as “Okra Abbey”, a spiritual sanctuary outside of the church walls, open to the community, serving as a resource hub and critical “third space” for the impoverished Pigeon Town neighborhood.

Layne and Crawford Brubaker worked closely with St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church and the Presbytery of South Louisiana to secure funding, permissions and partnerships to help dream, vision and build a true community garden for the “recreation of the spirit”. Their first outreach initiative was a weekly Wednesday community meal that they called “Grace & Greens.” Through grit and determination, the early leaders, volunteers and neighbors of Okra Abbey made culinary magic cobbled together from garden harvests, donations and creative fundraising. The core principle of Grace & Greens was consistency, believing that the key to building community and lasting relationships with (rightfully) skeptical neighbors was to be present week in and week out, to offer food and hospitality without barriers or “strings attached.” Over time, word got out in the neighborhood that anyone could come get a free meal and enjoy the company of their neighbors, and the people have been showing up to create the magic that is Okra Abbey ever since. 

10 years later, and Grace & Greens is still going strong, serving as an informal “neighborhood hub” of connection, communion, conversation & spiritual exploration. What started with a folding table, a few chairs and some home-cooked meals has evolved to include a massive community dining table, a shade structure with solar power, and a dynamic network of volunteers and community partners who help support the weekly operations of hosting and cooking for an average of 50-80 people! Okra Abbey staff collaborate with partner churches, local restaurants and food banks to secure food donations to supplement what we can grow in the garden. Despite the wide network of support, the monumental task of cooking phenomenal nourishing food for our community every week (52 weeks a year!) still requires immense creativity, generosity and collaboration.

This is where your gift comes in. Your gift matters, to so many people. Pigeon Town neighbors are some of the kindest, most generous people you’ll ever meet. But the community is struggling to survive decades of generational poverty, divestment of infrastructure and social services, housing insecurity and more. Grace & Greens will not solve all of Pigeon Town’s problems, but what we can do is bring people together and feed the mind, body and spirit of our friends and neighbors. Our meals allow us to convene important conversations, to gather feedback, to hear what our community is going through and what they are excited about. Consistency matters in a world with so much uncertainty, unpredictability and hardship.