Healthy eating on the menu for food-insecure population
Fewer Indigenous families will go hungry, with funding by the Victoria Foundation for a community food educator at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre.
One of the roles of the educator is to help create meals, develop recipes and provide mentoring about healthy eating for up to 500 food-insecure people.
“Our role is to educate people on how to find different ways to cook healthy meals,” said program manager Rebecca Mabee. “We have dietitians who provide people with guidance and options.”
The educator is also a liaison to the Food Rescue Project.
The Victoria Native Friendship Centre is one of more than 40 members of the Food Share Network, in partnership with the Mustard Seed Street Church.
Through the Food Share Network, fresh, nutritious but perishable food, donated by Thrifty Foods, is diverted from the landfill. It is collected, sorted and redistributed to the Victoria Native Friendship Centre to help feed its members.
“We use some of the food to serve up 25,000 meals a year,” said Mabee. “We put the rest in food hampers for families.”
The program contributes to an improvement in food security for local Indigenous people, including those with disabilities and low-income seniors.
The centre receives a shipment of perishable food once a week, typically on Wednesday.
Some of the diverted food is immediately prepared for meals, such as the group’s Wednesday soup lunch, in an industrial kitchen located at the centre. The remaining food is put in hampers to be picked up by members Wednesday to Friday. What’s left is stored in a cooler for use the following week.
Because donations can include fruit and vegetables that typically people with limited means would not consider purchasing, Mabee is tasked with educating them on how to prepare the food and how it is supposed to taste.
“I teach people the different ways to cook kale, for example,” she said. “What’s exciting is that the families I teach eventually end up teaching others.”
Mabee said the Victoria Native Friendship Centre also offers programs to teach people how to grow their own vegetables, again using kale as an example. “It’s all about healthy eating.” For more information, go to vnfc.ca or thriftyfoods.com/ community/communityprograms/food-rescue-project.