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"Food
security exists when all people, at all times,
have physical and economic access to enough safe and
nutritious food to satisfy their energy needs and food
preferences and to lead an active and healthy life."
Food and Agriculture
Organization, Action Plan adopted at the World Food
Summit, Rome, 1996
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Food security
guidelines
The guidelines
The food activities
of the agencies
Food insecurity in our society
In a developed country such as ours, a wide variety of fresh, healthy
foods are permanently available in very large, not to say overabundant,
quantities.
Yet thousands of our fellow citizens don’t have enough to eat
and worry constantly about where to find their next meal or how
to feed their families.
The many causes of food insecurity
There are several factors which can lead to food insecurity. The
persons concerned may :
- lack the necessary income to purchase enough nutritious food
to meet their needs;
- live in a neighbourhood with no grocery store, market or other
outlets where nutritious food is sold at an affordable price.
- be obliged to allocate too large a portion of their budget
to rent;
- lack the knowledge or have never been taught the necessary
skills to feed themselves nutritiously;
- have lost their social support network and be isolated.
Centraide’s approach: move beyond food
assistance
To Centraide, helping people means above all supporting their efforts
to find lasting solutions to their problems.
Regarding food security, it means that we must go beyond merely
giving people food and providing them and their communities with
the capacity to feed themselves.
For that reason, Centraide supports many agencies dedicated to providing
emergency food assistance - insofar as they also develop alternatives
and offer food activities that help the persons to become personally
and financially self-reliant and to take charge of their own development.
Centraide of Greater Montreal’s food security
guidelines
A conviction
In order to contribute effectively to the development of food
security, it is not enough to supply hungry people with food -
one must also provide them and their communities with the capability
to feed themselves.
This can be accomplished by :
- addressing not only the effects of food insecurity, but also
its causes;
- developing and implementing lasting solutions to the problem
of food insecurity.
A strategy
1. Regarding individuals
Help individuals to meet their food needs and overcome their poverty.
2. Regarding communities
Increase the capability of local and regional communities to meet
the food needs of all their residents while also promoting their
personal and financial autonomy.
3. Regarding our society as a whole
Improve the overall environment of our society, and influence
the social and economic values and policies which affect the access
by all people to food.
Food, tools and training: the food activities
of the agencies
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Saint-Rémi residents
Irène Lefebvre and Claudette Verge get ready
to prepare some tasty dishes for delivery to neighbourhood
seniors by meals-on-wheels volunteers.
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1. Food
assistance and catering
Food assistance is an immediate and
temporary response to a person’s food needs. It is also an
opportunity to reach out to isolated individuals and offer them
access to social integration programs. More and more, emergency
assistance activities are being combined with other activities which
require the recipient to become involved to some extent.
Different kinds of agencies carry out different
kinds of food assistance activities. For example:
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Food banks solicit and collect food
from food companies, local grocery stores and individuals. They
store the food and then redistribute it to community agencies,
or sometimes directly to individuals.
Food counters, which usually operate
locally, distribute food directly to individuals, either free
of charge or at a token cost.
Catering encompasses a wide range
of activities.
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Soup kitchens are establishments,
which offer low-cost community meals.
Common meals are offered on the premises
of an agency on a regular basis to help people feed themselves
nutritiously at low cost and break out of their isolation.
The school food program provides low-cost
meals and snacks to primary-school students in poor neighbourhoods.
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Gino Casse of the Jardins
collectifs de Longueuil community
vegetable garden. Community gardens are an alternative
to direct food assistance. The concept is very simple:
several participants
cultivate the same patch of land and share the produce.
The gardens yield quick, tangible results that stimulate
the gardeners’ confidence and pride.
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Community caterers are job training
organizations, which prepare low-cost meals for consumption in
the home.
Meals on Wheels programs prepare
meals which are delivered to recipients’ homes by volunteers,
or frozen meals, which are sold at community centres.
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2. Collective
food supply and cooking groups
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| Self-help groups call for personal participation on the part of
their clients. By getting involved, clients acquire knowledge and
skills, which enable them to manage their food insecurity more effectively
and to reduce the level of risk to which they are exposed.
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Collective food supply applies a basic
law of the market economy: by combining forces, consumers can negotiate
a better price for their food purchases or else produce food themselves
at a lower cost.
Purchasing groups and community grocery stores purchase food
in bulk, at discount or sale prices, from wholesalers, retailers
or farmers for the benefit of consumers.
Community gardens and gardening courses also involve pooling efforts
and resources, but for the purpose of producing high-quality fresh
food at low cost.
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Cooking in groups enables participants to pool their know-how.
The members of the group get together to prepare nutritious low-cost
meals for their own use, or for distribution or sale. In addition
to economic self-help, the groups offer learning and skill-sharing
opportunities.
Cooking groups bring people together for the purpose of using
food which was donated to the group or purchased at a discount in
order to prepare meals for themselves.
Food canning serves to supply the members of the group and sometimes
to finance their activities.
Budget cooking courses offer instruction in the art of preparing
low-cost meals, information sessions on nutrition, and group food-cost
analysis and sale-lookout activities.
Support for expectant mothers and mothers with young babies involves
supplying participants with food supplements and baby formula milk,
as well as offering them training in baby nutrition.
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3. Job
entry
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The compagnons of Chic
Resto Pop are responsible for training apprentices in
food preparation and service. In this way the agency,
which is directed by Jacynthe Ouellet, enables some
people to acquire job training and experience while
offering community meals to the needy.
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Job entry activities aim to provide lasting solutions by offering
training and skills development that will help recipients to achieve
the necessary self-reliance to ensure their own food security. They
involve training in meal preparation or food supply.
To find out which agencies offer food activities,
click here.
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