Women’s History Month Spotlight | Maria Alderete
During Women’s History Month, Eat. Learn. Play. celebrates influential women leaders who are doing great work supporting our mission of providing access to the three essential pillars of a healthy childhood — nutrition, education, and physical activity.
Meet Maria Alderete, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Community Kitchens Oakland. A veteran in the restaurant industry, and through her love of service, Maria co-founded Community Kitchens to form a collective of local restaurants committed to helping feed the community hot, nutritious meals. With the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacting local Oakland restaurants and businesses, Community Kitchens has not only helped feed the unhoused community, but has also supported both local restaurants and jobs.
We are so grateful to be working alongside Community Kitchens and local restaurants to feed kids and families in the Oakland community. Continue reading about Maria’s work below. Stay tuned this month for more profiles of inspiring women leaders that support our work here at Eat. Learn. Play.
What does Women’s History Month mean to you?
Maria: Women’s History Month is an opportunity for all of us to look at our shared history through a different lens and challenge some of our assumptions about that story. As a girl growing up, it was accepted as normal for our history to be a story about men, told by men. Women became invisible and marginalized in that narrative, and I think that robs of girls of role models and the true sense of what they can accomplish. Growing up in a conservative church and community, this is something I came up against early in life. Learning what I was capable of was a long process of discovery.
We’re all in this together. We always have been. If we devalue the contributions of women then we’re all losing out on the full benefits of what women have to offer. Women’s History Month encourages us all to challenge ourselves on that front, both men and women. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it keeps us looking in the right direction.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
Maria: Looking back, I grew up with a lot of anger and frustration around privilege and discrimination. As a girl in the Catholic Church, there were things I wasn’t allowed to do that boys were. I got really upset, for example, when I learned I couldn’t be an altar server for the bishop because I was a girl. I learned early on that, even among the girls, there was a hierarchy of privilege that would work to keep opportunities out of reach for some but not for others.
Feeling inequality and harnessing that energy has really driven me and is fundamental to who I am today, but it can also be a burden and a barrier. If I had one thing I could tell my teenage self - Barriers are for climbing. Don’t let them hold you back. They will make you stronger.
What do you admire most about Community Kitchen’s work with Eat. Learn. Play.?
Maria: Honestly, it’s a tremendous honor to partner with Eat. Learn. Play. I’m in awe at what Stephen and Ayesha have contributed to our community. Not just the scope of what they’ve done, but their personal commitment to it is truly unique. These are people who are blessed with the opportunity to do anything they want in life, and they’ve chosen to turn that blessing into a gift for young people in Oakland. That character is reflected throughout the organization. Everything they do is creative and thoughtfully executed. It’s very inspirational for me personally.
One of the central ideas driving our work at Community Kitchens is the power of food to define a person’s place in society. What, how and with whom we eat reinforces our status and self-perception every day. This is why we place such an emphasis on the quality of the meals we provide, ensuring not only there is a place at the table for everyone, but also served with equal dignity for all.
The part I love most is how seamlessly [Eat. Learn. Play. and Community Kitchens] missions flow together and complement one another. We’re both community builders, making sure that everybody stays connected and nobody gets left behind at the margins. Whatever they dream up, we know it advances our mission. A year ago, I never would have imagined Community Kitchens would be handing out meals from a custom-crafted Eat. Learn. Play. Bus, but now, I don’t know we ever thought to do it any other way!
Is there anything else you’d like to share in your spotlight?
Maria: Gender roles are one of the many cultural aspects reflected in our foodways. The idea of cooking at home as a woman’s work is a well-known example of this – and one that lives on – but the full picture is more complicated. One less seen aspect is the role of gender in commercial kitchens. Professional Chef is a career path traditionally unwelcoming to women, and this is something just starting to change. People don’t always see how impactful this is, but as a woman who has spent years working in and around restaurants, I want to highlight what Stephen and Ayesha are doing by specifically supporting Black women-owned restaurants in their meals program. The support and visibility of their project pushes the needle in the right direction for a whole industry desperately in need of it.
Connect with Maria
Have a question for Maria?
Connect with her here.
Read more about Community Kitchens and their work in Oakland by clicking the link below.