With a provincial election in Ontario on Oct. 10th, World Food Day on Oct. 16th and a federal election on the horizon there have never been more opportunities to support hunger and poverty reduction in Canada.
Meal Exchange is proud to be among the supporters of the following initiatives and would like to encourage your involvement in:
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Vote Out Poverty
Monday, October 1 at 7:30pm at Massy Hall in Toronto
With Keynote Speaker Stephen Lewis and host Mary Walsh. With George Stroumboulopoulos and musical appearances by Susan Aglukark, the Hidden Cameras, the Nylons & Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.Ontario nees a Poverty Reduction Strategy that sets specific goals and actions to reduce the depth and scope of poverty. Such a strategy would offer a long term approach to prevent, reduce and alleviate poverty in Ontario. Poverty CAN be eliminated in Ontario. Countries such as the UK and Ireland have implemented poverty reduction strategies that have achieved significant success, and are aiming to fully eliminate child poverty by 2020. Newfoundland and Labrador have implemented a poverty reduction strategy and aim to become the province with the least poverty in the country. Quebec has adopted an Act to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion and published an Action Plan to Combat Poverty.
Presented by the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice and Make Poverty History
Thought for Food
The Thought for Food campaign is an initiative of the Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB). It is a campaign designed to get Ontarians engaged in a discussion about hunger and poverty during the provincial election and beyond. The goal is the development and implementation of a comprehensive poverty reduction plan.
Read their inspiring discussion
paper 
OAFB - New Perspective on Hunger 734.13 Kb
The campaign features a number of activities including a Fall Lecture Series on university campuses across the province, low-income voter engagement activities, an all-party issue survey, online tools and resources, and a Gala event in November featuring Stephen Lewis as the keynote speaker.
Hungry City
There is no excuse for hunger and poverty in a country as wealthy as Canada. Hungry City: Make Your Mark is a Daily Bread Food Bank initiative meant to engage and mobilize Ontarions to elect a provincial government that will commit to ending hunger and poverty on October 10th 2007. Daily Bread is calling on the next Ontario government to implement a poverty reduction plan with timelines and targets.
So far, nearly 5,000 individuals have shown their support for the initiative by signing on at hungrycity.ca. Be sure to visit the site to learn more, make your mark and spread the word.
Alphabet City Festival 2007
The Alphabet Cityand FOOD Festival runs September 27 to October 20
food connects us all - read the open letter here
Alphabet City
is an annual multidisciplinary festival that combines politics, policy, visual
art, innovation, theatre, music, and connections between the arts and sciences.
Organized around a single word, the festival encourages debate and creates a
context for action. The festival also marks the release of the Alphabet
City book, an anthology of critical
and visual work.
This year's theme is FOOD. As the slow food movement meets the fast food nation
and eating locally collides with on-demand arugula, our food habits are
shifting: writers and artists examine and imagine these changes, from the idea
of a farm in a skyscraper to a map of fruit that falls on public property, from
the genealogy of an organic bento box to a tale of chop suey and egg rolls. As
part of the festival, we are publishing an open letter, supported by, and
representing the initiatives of, a network of organizations working on many
aspects of food policy in Ontario.
We are working together because we believe that food is connected to every
major problem being raised in the current provincial election campaign—rising
medical costs, poverty and hunger, declining farm incomes, the paving-over of
farmland, wildlife protection, urban sprawl, youth unemployment, and
communities at risk.