Good Food Champions

“The vision of an ample, healthy, respectful food culture across Canada can become a reality when chefs, farmers, educators and consumers all link arms. Community Food Centres offer a successful blueprint for how this can be done – a local grassroots initiative with national potential. Imagine the benefit if there were a CFC in every Canadian community.”

"I've been very fortunate to have been raised in the gardening business.  My late father Len taught me from an early age that tending my own garden also means looking out for people who do not have the opportunity to access one for themselves. To give back.  Gardens have  brought me great joy, and the experience has  taught me that a healthy earth equals healthy food, and that healthy food equals healthy people. I believe food can be a great equalizer. Helping others access and produce their own food is a meaningful contribution that all of us can make to a peaceful and prosperous world. That's why I'm proud to support Community Food Centres Canada and the work they do to increase access to local, sustainable food in low-income communities, and to use gardens and kitchens as a springboard for healthier and more engaged communities."

“As a holistic nutritionist and a real food media advocate, I know that good food has the power to transform lives in innumerable positive ways. These benefits should be enjoyed by everyone, not only by select groups in certain income brackets. It seems an obvious assertion that access to healthy food should be a basic human right. Yet, unbelievably, household food insecurity is a growing problem in our wealthy country. I firmly believe this systemic inequity can only be truly addressed with a holistic and sustainable approach and that’s what the CFCC offers.
I’m honoured to help champion the CFCC’s dignified, community-building approach to real food and believe that their work can make a significant and positive impact in communities and food systems across our country.”

"The opportunity exists for CFCC to spread its unique and food-focused program across the country, and I love seeing the list of chefs that are returning to this cause, and joining it for the first time. It’s such a great community."

"We all acknowledge that we need a more sustainable and fairer food system, where farmers get paid properly, the environment is not degraded, and people of every income level have access to food choices and healthy food. But what are we doing to promote change in our food system? By engaging with local community organisations across the country CFCC is bringing national attention to these vital food security issues, and at the same time is helping develop local solutions. I am so grateful that CFCC is taking the initiative, and in a bold way; let’s support these efforts generously."

"CFCC combines my three favourite things: disruptive innovation of a service, helping vulnerable populations with a basic need, and the creation of a culture of care."

"What Community Food Centres is doing is doing is creating communidades de base, a foundation of the liberation movement in Latin America that helped lead to so many good things like the Workers' Party and ultimately to Brazil's Fome Zero campaign.
We urgently need to build a fairer, more resilient and sustainable food system, and we can only do that by involving everyone in that process. By connecting the dots between low-income communities and local farmers, consumer choices and our environment, Community Food Centres Canada is fighting for a living democracy where equitable access to good food is a reality.”

“I’ve travelled all around the world and I’ve never seen anything like The Stop. Every city should have one.”

“How do we get to a world where everyone eats well? The food movement has spawned thousands of local experiments to come up with the answer, and now’s the time to start dreaming bigger. Now’s the time for local initiatives to feed, and be fed by, a larger national vision for change. Community Food Centres Canada is growing an incredible platform for food justice, one that will be a model not just in Canada, but for the planet.”

“Urban food poverty in the developed world is one of the great underestimated challenges of our time. Many people are locked in self-reinforcing cycles of food poverty and social marginalisation. Community Food Centres Canada and its partner sites work to break these cycles. Its work is invaluable and should serve as a model across Canada.”

"I tell people all the time that cooking can be fun, easy and good for you. Community Food Centres Canada’s work is so important because it uses food as a catalyst for social change. It shows us that cooking can be fun and easy while also encouraging meaningful conversations about health, equality of access and sustainability. That’s what I found so exciting and necessary. Bravo!”