Are You Passionate About FOOD SECURITY?
Franco Savoia
A recent report from Food Banks Canada notes that 1 in 5 Calgarians and 1in 4 Albertan households were food insecure in 2023. Current experience by agencies providing emergency food in Calgary note that the number of people accessing food banks has greatly increased in 2024.
What is our club doing about this?
Our Rotary Club has invested and partnered with I Can for Kids, Community Kitchen, Meals on Wheels, the Distress Centre and Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids over the past 4 years in a variety of projects to confront the basic need for food and the development of Bread, an app to improve access for Calgarians needing emergency food.
Our Club has also joined Food Collaborative YYC, a broad-based community collaborative committed to better respond to the immediate needs of Calgarians who don’t have food in the refrigerators, and to driving solutions that address the root causes of this challenging issue.
Our Club’s approved funding strategy has established food security as one of the four focus areas which will guide us over the next two years. We will officially unveil this area of focus at one of our upcoming club meetings. Food security is simple to describe and very challenging by its complexity.
As we advance this area of focus, there are opportunities in the community to deepen our understanding and to participate in round tables such as the Food Collaborative YYC.
Our ask: Are you passionate about food security? If so, consider stepping forward as we need two or three Rotarians to engage in the community and bring our Rotarian values, experience and treasure to realize longer terms solutions that will reduce and in time eliminate the need. Please contact Franco Savoia for more information.