Kitchen Tables

As we all know, food is a basic need. Nutritious food on a low income is hard to find. So what’s the solution?

The Downtown East Side Neighbourhood House and Potluck Café & Catering Society are collaborating on the Kitchen Tables Project to create “action-oriented solutions increasing the availability, accessibility, affordability and choice of quality, nutritious food security solutions for residents of the DTES.”

It’s a thorough plan, that goes beyond New York’s City Harvest Healthy Neighborhoods program, which provides nutrition education supported by a communications campaign.

The Kitchen Tables Program looks at ways of considering food solutions “from seed to compost” in the specific context of the DTES. Addressing food distribution, community capacity through job creation, supporting local economies but also envisaging the scalability and transferability of the initiative to other communities down the road.

The full report on this initative offers an informative historic and demographic overview of the neighbourhood as well as programs currently operating in the area.

There are approximately 15 community kitchens in the DTES, allowing users to learn cooking and nutrition skills in a friendly environment and a slew of other free food programs including food reclamation services (Greater Vancouver Food Bank), food pickup (Carnegie Community Centre) or delivery (A Loving Spoonful) and ready-to-eat food (“soup kitchens”). Despite this apparent bounty, only a small portion of DTES residents have access to cooking facilities or nutritious food—including fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy—and many spend up to 3 hours a day searching for food.

The DTES Kitchen Tables Program is in the running for a $100,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh initiative which I had featured a few months back.

You know what to do.