Episode 02: AJ McCreary
AJ McCreary: Director & Co-Founder of Equitable Giving Circle, Philanthropist, Activist, Mother | Interviewed By Rashad Floyd
Being light-skinned is a different way to move through the world, it’s just a different experience period. I wish more people who looked like me would show up like me. We're able to slip into spaces and then hold the door open for our people.
My name is AJ McCreary and I graduated from Benson High School in Northeast Portland. I went to Xavier University in Louisiana. I was a debutant which really helped shape my interest in community service. My background is in marketing and development, and fundraising; And I hated it. I've always wanted to work directly for my community and to be able to live off of it. So during the pandemic, I actually created that job.
When I think about community I think of a circle. We're raising money for equity, we're actively giving. And the word circle is encompassing all of the things that we are doing. We have a food program where we buy produce from black and brown farmers, then deliver it to black and brown families across the metro area every week. We’ve started some other little projects including a plant jam, and it's just an ask for white folks to give plants to BIPOC folks. It's just a really beautiful way to create community care, and it's also a way to teach and practice reparations. So we're practicing sharing things that we have with other people, with no strings attached. The idea is, you did it with a plant, now you can do it with some money.
Having the right team has made all of this work possible. We really do care about the families that we serve and we want to serve more families. So when people say our food boxes feel like they are packed with love and care, it’s because they are.
Getting to build with a team of black women, black fems and Indigenous women in Portland, Oregon is profound. We're creating community healing, we're creating jobs, we're celebrating. It's the best feeling. EGC's work really is about creating dignity, care, and love, and there's a lot of food programs that happen in our city, state, and nationwide that are horrible. They are just expired food, not culturally specific and they do not include the black and brown food purveyors or farmers.
Hopefully, our program will help more black and brown farmers and indigenous farmers. It’s about doing business in a way that's sustainable for everybody. Supporting black and brown farmers, supporting indigenous folks, supporting women-owned businesses is the root of our work, so we get to support people that look like us, that move through the world like us, it's magic.
Our generation, who are now moving in spaces of power professionally, our ask is different. The way that we think is different, the way that we show up is different, this is the recipe for amazing things to happen.
