#RightsNotCharity

Category: Blog

‘Big Food’ at the UN table: A recipe for big waste?

waste nor hunger has been significantly decreased as a result of these efforts. Is the answer, then, just to urge companies to redistribute more surplus, and perhaps tweak their supply chain processes a little harder?

Food Banks and Charity as a False Response to Hunger in the Wealthy but Unequal Countries

Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2021 – The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the food injustices and inequalities felt by too many in the so-called ‚Global North‘, particularly those in marginalized communities – Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

Not Our Menu: False solutions to hunger and malnutrition

Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2021 – This year’s edition of the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch – Not Our Menu: False Solutions to Hunger and Malnutrition – attempts  to connect the dots surrounding the food that we eat.

Food poverty at record levels – a children’s book on food banks shows how normal it has become

“Wake up, mum. I’m hungry!” This is the opening line to the recently published children’s book, It’s a No-Money Day, by Kate Milner, a powerful exploration of food banks and life below the poverty line.

Food Poverty Has No Place in Our Society

Dave Beck is a lecturer in social policy at the University of Salford and expert on food poverty. We chat to him about his work, the role of food banks in the UK and how he believes we could eliminate food poverty.

More than food banks are needed to feed the hungry during the coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19 is revealing critical weaknesses in how we care for each other. While many Canadians are being thrown out of work and need emergency food assistance, food banks have had to shut down operations to deal with physical distancing requirements, reduce staffing as elderly volunteers stay home to self-isolate and ration food as donations decline.

E81: Time for Universal Free School Meals

This podcast is part of the Duke World Food Policy Center – The Leading Voices in Food series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our food system. When the pandemic forced schools to close, school districts and states scrambled to keep a nutritional safety net working for vulnerable students. Millions of US students rely on school meals and summer feeding programs to get food each day. I am delighted to welcome Janet Poppendieck from the City University of New York Urban Food Policy Institute to this podcast. She is the author of “Free for All: Fixing School Lunch in America.”

E79: Andy Fisher on Exploring the Connection Between Industry and Food Banks

This podcast is part of The Leading Voices in Food series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is exposing a deep flaw in the country’s food system, namely stunning levels of food insecurity, but also the transformation of emergency food assistance into what some have characterized as an industry as food charity become big business. Andy Fisher, our guest today is a leader in the Food Security and Food Justice Movement. He founded and led The National Community Food Security Coalition and led Federal Legislation campaigns to gain more than $200 million for community-based food security and farm to school projects.

E80: Janet Poppendieck – COVID Highlights the Problems with Charity Food

This podcast is part of The Leading Voices in Food series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re exploring today, the role of charitable efforts to address food access. Places such as food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries. Janet Poppendieck has studied the emergency food system in the U.S. for decades. She is professor emerita of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York and the author of the book, “Sweet Charity, Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement.”

Ep 15: Jennifer Black on Creating Connections Through Food

Jennifer Black, an expert on food systems, joins Kalina Christoff to discuss the role of food in creating connections and communities, the surprising impact of school lunch programs and how the pandemic has affected food security and mental health in Canada. Dr. Black is an Associate Professor of Food, Nutrition and Health in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC and a 2020 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute. Her research looks at the complex social and contextual factors that shape our attitudes and behaviours around food and eating.

How Food Banks are Advancing the Right to Food Movement

Learn about grassroots initiatives that advance the right to food by drawing political attention to the root causes of hunger. This story features the work of our members Alison Cohen, Senior Director of Programs at WhyHunger, Christina Wong, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at Northwest Harvest, and Joshua Lohnes, Food Policy Research Director at West Virginia University’s Center for Resilient Communities, and an advocate in the Food For All coalition.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Wikimedia Commons

Freedom From Want: Advocating for the Right to Food in the United States

The current state of food insecurity and the strategies for addressing hunger in the U.S. are a far cry from the vision the Roosevelts invoked on the eve of the establishment of the United Nations. With the growth of more than 60,000 private charitable organizations distributing food to tens of million of people in need while public social security unravels, Americans are not guaranteed the freedom from want. And so, we continue to advocate.

Providing public funding for food banks ‘makes a mockery of the data that shows food insecurity is an income problem that must be dealt with through poverty reduction and social inclusion.’ Photo by Jonathan Hayward, the Canadian Press.

Hey, Minister. It’s Time to End Our Disgraceful Food Bank Dependency

Graham Riches, professor emeritus of social work at the University of British Columbia, pens open letter to Nicholas Simons, B.C.’s minister of social development

How foodbanks went global

Charlie Spring, who critically examined charitable food networks in her doctoral and postdoctoral research, investigates the spread of food banks across affluent nations and beyond. She explains how the relationship between food waste and food charity is more complex and problematic than the “win-win” it is often portrayed to be.

Photo by Laura James

Covid-19 and everyday experiences of hardship: why charitable provision is not enough

Commentary – At a time of global crisis, the UK’s fraying safety net has been under scrutiny and subject to urgent—though temporary—changes to slightly strengthen it, as part of efforts to improve the experiences of those relying on out-of-work social security for the first time.

Mutual-aid organizing for food security puts solidarity over charity

Blog – Mutual aid efforts have a long-standing history of mobilizing food as an organizing tool — as a meeting point around which communities come together.

image by congerdesign

How One Organization Can Shorten Food Bank Lines Across the United States

Author and activist Andy Fisher describes how America’s largest food charity, Feeding America, has failed to embrace the progressive values needed to respond to multi-faceted social inequities. Here is a 10-point plan to change that.

Philanthropy must go beyond charity to fund transformational food system change

On October 22, 2020, the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice urged members of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders (SAFSF) to go beyond charity and work toward transformational food system change through the first of a two-part webinar series titled: “We Can’t ‘Foodbank’ Our way Out of Hunger.”

COVID-19 and the Right to Food

The Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice is a group of non-governmental organizations, national networks, grassroots activists, and scholars began to emerge two years ago out of relationships built at Trans-Atlantic conferences and meetings, resulting in a growing shared analysis of and reaction to the increased use of private philanthropy and transnational corporate food banking as a response to “rich world” hunger and poverty.

Soup kitchen

Canada must eliminate food banks and provide a basic income after COVID-19

Graham Riches, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, explains how food insecurity is a problem of inadequate income rather than food supply.