Nick Saul, president of
Community Food Centres Canada and former manager of Toronto community food bank
the Stop, penned a piece for
the Guardian detailing his observations on what makes a food bank successful. The key ingredient, he says, is "food banks need to feed people's hope and purpose, not just their hunger."
Saul has been looking at Britain's food bank situation with growing concern that they're falling victim to a problem he feels has affected Toronto, but that is shifting here. He says it's the construed notion that simply providing food is enough, when the larger issues of people's value of worth need to also be addressed.
"In 1998, when I took over The Stop, a small, under-resourced food bank in a low-income neighbourhood in Toronto, it was like hundreds of other makeshift, church-basement charities popping up across the country. Lineups wound out the door. When you got to the front, you were handed a hamper of largely unhealthy processed food – corporate castoffs – intended to last a few days. It was a place where people kept their eyes on the floor and checked their dignity at the door," Saul says.
"In our community, we didn't buy the rhetoric that there was no better alternative for those who fall through the cracks of our country's fraying social safety net. So we created programmes at The Stop that meet people's immediate food needs, but also allow them to be active participants in their own lives and neighbourhoods."
Saul writes about how the Stop built "a community food centre with shared gardens, community kitchens and dining; nutrition initiatives for low-income, pregnant women; after-school workshops for children; and affordable, fresh market stands." He says they started looking at food as a tool to build health and began changing the perspective of food's role in the lives of those in need.
"We've created allies in the farming, restaurant, gardening, middle-class foodie and social justice worlds, and, instead of applying a new plaster every day, we're building organizations that reflect the healthy, dignified, inclusive future we want to see."
The piece offers an interesting take on food banks in Toronto, while also commenting on food banks overseas. He says still work needs to be done.
"By making people think the problem is dealt with--the hungry fed--they let us and our governments off the hook for finding real economic and social policy--based solutions to this growing problem."
Read the full story
here.
Original source: The Guardian