Freedom 90 Blog

More on teaching people to make the most of what they have

Deputy Mayor of Mulmur Heather Hayes sees issues first hand in her work as a Dufferin Child and Family Service Coordinator.

 
“We expect the most resourcefulness from people who typically have the least resources. I’m referring to who can make canned beans into a meal a family will eat without a pantry of spices and condiments to make them taste good, the implements to prepare them (from knives, to frying pans to casserole dishes to freezers to store extras) and the skills to make them into meals.”

“Within my circle of friends, coworkers and family, few people have the skills to do what we ask of clients of the food bank to do monthly.”

Link to Shelburne Free Press – Put Food in the Budget Challenge

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Teaching people to make the most of what they have?

A recent article in a local paper for the Wellington, Ontario area has Linda Downey, president of the Storehouse Wellington and District Foodbank, telling us:

“There’s no full-time jobs, there’s no affordable housing – a lot of people can’t afford to eat. Most of our clients work, some hold two or three part-time jobs, but they barely make enough to pay the rent.”

“We see seniors spending their entire pension cheque on rent, they have no savings and maybe they’ve lost a spouse”.

The article goes on to say that Ms. Downey is adamant that education is the key to breaking the hunger cycle:

“For years, foodbanks have been a bandage and what they really need to be is a bridge – a bridge to re-educate people, teach them how to get back to the basics.”

“For generations people passed down the lessons on how to make the most of what they had and that seems to be lost now. We need to get back to that.”

To summarize:

– there’s no full-time jobs
– there’s no affordable housing
– a lot of people can’t afford to eat
– most of the food bank clients work, some hold two or three part-time jobs, but they barely make enough to pay the rent
– seniors have no savings and are spending their entire pension cheques on rent

And this is a problem that can be solved by teaching people to make the most of what they have?

Sorry, but this is a problem of people not having enough income.

Link to Belleville Intelligencer – Foodbank proactive in addressing hunger

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Needed: A distribution system that works

“There’s a distribution system that works very well, but the fact it works very well has a value to it, right?”

 
That’s Kathleen Wynne talking to Toronto Star about how the Ontario government is going to implement change so that the 375,000 Ontarians who now use food banks will be buying wholesome, nutritious food in grocery stores, right?

Sorry, but you’ll be disappointed to learn that she’s talking about the distribution of alcohol, not food.

I guess we all have our priorities.

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When will government fix it?

Remember the days when the government would have us stand in line at mass clinics to get the flu shot?  Now it’s as easy as going to the pharmacy.

The less fortunate among us still stand in line at food banks.  When will government fix it so that they can just go to the grocery store?

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Just put a number on it

Appearing in today’s news is a story that the Harper government passed up conducting its own internal analysis on the job-creating potential of this fall’s $550-million small-business job credit, relying instead on numbers produced by Canadian Federation of Independent Business which asserted that 25,000 person-years of employment would result from this initiative.

Just put a number on it.  Who’s going to question it? (more…)

The Corporatization of Food Banks

Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto boasts:

“We operate a 108,000 square foot warehouse facility with a professional inventory management system and efficient receiving docks. Our fleet of trucks moves your donation quickly to our network of 170 agencies across the city that distribute our food through food banks and meal programs.”

And bills itself as “A business with a charitable purpose.”

The corporatization of food banks.  Is this what we want?  Or do we want governments to adequately fund the social safety net?  Why shouldn’t society’s most vulnerable be able to buy their food in grocery stores like everyone else?

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