Tayo Mbande and conspirators made Love Packages to support Black parents as a supreme labor of love and a lesson in equity.
By Sarah Conway
(Photo: Isiah ThoughtPoet Veney)
This profile is part of our How a Community Heals series.
For Tayo Mbande, protecting Black birthing people and parents from “big and small things that steal [their] joy” is paramount to her work as a South Side doula and co-founder of Chicago Birthworks Collective.
In late May 2020, when downtown Chicago bridges went up, city curfews and emergency orders were issued, and stores were boarded, Mbande and her Black neighbors on the South Side felt the impact immediately. “We couldn't get water, we couldn't get any wipes, we couldn't get diapers, we couldn't get groceries. My husband and I have a Costco membership, but we couldn't even get to Costco because the expressway was closed,” she remembers. “It felt like a dismissal of Black people’s lives not just mattering and being valuable, but being wonderful.”
The collective coalesced around a solution for Black families caring for babies and young children. Tender packages abundant in baby essentials and self-care items, they decided, would convey their message that Black people deserve great love, not just the bare minimum for survival. The Love Package Project was born in June 2020 and has given free care packages to over 1,000 Black families on the South Side and across Chicago.
Inside each Love Package is a carefully curated mix of accouchement essentials: diapers, formula, baby feeding tools, non-perishable snacks, wellness products and more. If a family needs a car seat or a high chair, they can supply one, too. During the height of operations, they had three pick-up locations (including Mbande's home) and over 30 drop-off sites across the city, including restaurants, people's homes and real estate businesses. Companies have jumped in to donate everything from wellness products for kids and babies, to menstrual cups to baby bottles and Montessori-method toys.
“If you are a Black person, you deserve this love. She doesn't deserve to have to do all that stuff, to have to raise her children and experience this whopping racist moment, you know, and have to … fight for groceries and toilet paper and detergent,” she says.
It’s why Mbande and her mother, Toni Taylor, founded Chicago Birthworks Collective, a “village” of birth workers, wellness practitioners and healers based out of the South Side in 2018. Here, Black families across Chicago can find support through a constellation of birth and postpartum doula services like lactation counseling, birth classes, placenta encapsulation and more, in a state and country where Black birthing people die at disproportionate rates compared to their white counterparts. The group envelopes Black parents in its immense love, freeing them from “stress of racism, sexism, capitalism, genderism, ageism, ableism or any other wack barrier.”
Mbande remembers, at times, she felt overwhelmed as a small business owner maintaining a large-scale mutual aid effort while balancing life as a pregnant mother of three. The first three weeks, the team would go to sleep at 2 a.m., then wake up at 7 a.m. when the phone began to ring again, Chicagoans and businesses eager to donate would call nonstop, the dining room table was a workstation. “We were like an emergency relief hotline, and it hurt me to know that this work was on us. It was on us to lose sleep when a lot of people weren't at work at that time,” she remembers. “I love these people, so yes, I will be out here at 6 p.m. sorting through baby hats because they're worth it.”
This summer was a lesson in equity. She saw non-Black people galvanize their networks through sororities, church drives and businesses to support this Black run-project and Black families.
“Their leftovers are so abundant that my house was full. Every single room was completely covered in baby formula, baby food, baby bottles, pads and tampons,” she remembers. While some may see it as an excellent problem to have, Mbande saw it as proof of an unjust system where some people fight for meager resources while others have more than they need. “It made me see that we can all do better on the regular for Black families. Everybody has the capacity.”
And it is a reminder that non-Black people need to take on the labor and creativity in supporting Black Chicagoans with little expectation of recognition in return, she adds: “Our goal was to make sure that everyone understood that this was an act of love. This has nothing to do with charity, and everything to do with redistribution of resources.” Today, Love Packages find their way to 30 to 50 Black households each month via delivery.
Healing to Mbande looks like reimagining ways to show love, be creative and get “really, really intrusive” on what someone needs to heal by centering the people most impacted and listening. Easing economic and systemic racism is critical. People should ask themselves, “In what ways can I reduce that impact a little bit on you so that you can breathe and you can take that time to heal? How are you healing when you are constantly being attacked?” she says.
That’s how Mbande sees the Love Packages fitting into Chicago—little packages that carve out a bit of space to breathe in the bustling life of Black parents. While Chicago Birthworks Collective doesn’t have any requirements on how long you can receive a Love Package, most families apply each month to receive one at their door.
Mbande says that each package values at $300 or more, and she hopes that this money saved each month is reinvested back into wellness on the recipient’s own terms. “Healing looks like really exploring and getting creative with how you can show love to these families so that they can practice their own healing.”
You can support Chicago Birthworks Collective and their Love Packages project by donating here.
Sarah Conway (she/her) is a senior reporter and special projects manager at City Bureau.
This story is available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read City Bureau’s guidelines here.
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