Neighbours give Black families a nutritional lift
Team of volunteers offer hot meals and groceries to needy households
Neighbours Antonia Lawrence and Emily Carson joke that you should not allow two activists to live close to each other, because they’ll get bored and start a project like Uplift Kitchen.
It started organically, they say. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the two co-founders and other neighbours got in the habit of sharing food and supplies in Toronto’s Beaches area.
A neighbour with a car would go to the grocery store and check with the others to see what they needed. Especially for Carson, who is immunocompromised and couldn’t leave the house for the first three months of shutdown. They’d share flour, sugar, yeast — a much sought-after commodity. “We were already community sharing,” Carson said.
Then, after George Floyd was killed in the U.S. and in Canada the deaths of D’Andre Campbell and Regis Korchinski-Paquet set off a local wave of resisting anti-Black racism, both Lawrence and Carson, who have backgrounds in non-profit and food service, felt compelled to help. “How do we do something that’s going to make some kind of impact, in our own community and our own cultures in our own neighbourhood?” Carson said.
So in early June, Lawrence and Carson put together an Instagram account for Uplift Kitchen, announcing that it would be providing hot meals and groceries to Black-identifying people in need, as well as others affected by systemic racism. In Canada, Black households are almost twice as likely as white households to be food insecure, based on research conducted last year by FoodShare and the University of Toronto. Donations poured in. “We set up our Instagram on a Friday night and, by that next Sunday morning, we had like three grand of personal donations from people giving $5, $10, $20,” Carson recalled.
She handles the menu and nutritional plan each week. On Thursdays, they head to local grocery stores and snag whatever they can on sale, usually spending about $130 each week to feed 30 or so people.
They spend the day cooking, as do their volunteers, among whom are some professional chefs. Carson also put together a health and safety guide for volunteer bakers and cooks. Then on Fridays, volunteers make the rounds bringing food to the recipients’ doors.
The menus have run the range of East African dishes, like Kenyan beef stew, Indian curries and biryani, Caribbean food and more.
Carson, who is Indigenous, does HIV/AIDS work that has taken them around the world, staying with friends who taught them to cook a variety of cuisines.
“I shop way too many grocery stores because I kind of have an obsession with it,” Carson said. “Who has the fresh peaches that are 76 cents per kilo? Who has milk on sale?”
The team also has been pulling from their community garden space, where they’ve grown things like collard greens and tomatoes.
Restaurants in the city, like Planta, Triple A Bar and White Lily Diner, have donated meals, gift cards or expressed interest in helping.
There is also an option for families to receive groceries through FoodShare Toronto.
Thus far, the co-founders and all the volunteers are all working for free. “We’re trying to really make sure that every dollar that goes into what we’re doing goes back into the people’s mouths,” Carson said.
Uplift Kitchen doesn’t ask many invasive questions to determine need. The co-founders say that in their experience, if you get to the point where you are asking for help, you really need it.
“I’m not doing a background check,” Lawrence said. “If you say you need it, you need it.”
“It takes a lot of strength to ask for what we’re providing,” Carson said. If you’ve got the strength to ask, “I don’t care who you are. I’ll feed you all day long.”
During the pandemic, traditional food banks became challenging to access due to reduced opening hours and few delivery options. And even during regular times, using the service isn’t always the best experience.
“It is not fun waiting in those lines. It is soul crushing,” Carson said.
Health is a big priority for them, but Lawrence and Carson also ask for feedback and want to make sure they give these families food that accommodates their dietary restrictions and is what they actually want to eat.
One woman said she missed having mangoes and grits, which can be expensive in Canada, so they added those to the next delivery.
Another mother told Uplift that her daughter is a bit of a picky eater, and feeling depressed lately because of COVID, but likes macaroni and cheese. So Carson made homemade mac and cheese for all 30 people that week and had two volunteer chefs make salads to add more nutrients.
“I’m not going to give you lettuce when you ask for tomatoes,” Lawrence said. “It’s not hard for us to switch that up and curate … Having people being empowered to have choice is the biggest thing for us.”
Uplift has plans to move into a bigger space. The Leslieville Farmers Market offered them access to a commercial kitchen space, so they’ll be able to invite volunteers to help prep meals and store more food.
“It’s just such a testament to community in Toronto,” Lawrence said.
Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering inequity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email: afrancis@thestar.ca