A guest post, written by our friends at The Stop Community Food Center.
Hey there! We’re The Stop Community Food Centre, a local charity that uses good food to bring people together, to build community, and to challenge inequality.
Our friends at The Sweet Potato have been supporting our work for years with their annual holiday food drives and fundraisers. Thanks to generous Sweet Potato customers, we’ve been able to distribute thousands of pounds of healthy and delicious groceries to people in our community who are struggling with food insecurity.
Now that COVID-19 has dramatically increased the need for our emergency food services, The Sweet Potato team have stepped up in another incredible show of solidarity—every time you add a cash donation to The Stop to your grocery bill, they’ll double it!
Here’s a little about what you’re supporting:
The Stop was one of Canada’s first food banks back in the early 80’s, but since then we’ve blossomed into a thriving community hub, with dozens of programs that focus on good food grown, cooked, and served with dignity.
We’ve got three locations: At 1884 Davenport Road, we provide frontline services to our community, including a drop-in meal program, healthy food bank, perinatal supports, peer advocacy, good food markets, and community kitchens. At our Green Barn inside Artscape Wychwood Barns at 601 Christie Street, we run a greenhouse, a sheltered garden, community bake oven, and compost demonstration centre—along with our year-round Farmers’ Market. Finally, The Stop’s Wychwood Open Door at 729 St. Clair West is our newest location. It’s a daytime drop-in centre that brings community members together around good food and enriching activities.
Uniting all of our sites and programs is the fierce belief that healthy, sustainable, and culturally appropriate food should be accessible to everyone.
Like everyone who works with food, The Stop has had to change a lot since COVID-19. We’ve closed most of our programs, but we’re still keeping our community fed and connected by offering emergency food services to people struggling with food security during the pandemic.
In the last two months, we’ve:
- Distributed over 1,200 long-lasting, healthy hampers in our Food Bank.
- Served an average of 350 hearty takeout meals every single weekday.
- Operated a daily phone-in support line for people in crisis.
- Grown thousands of seedlings that will soon become fresh produce that we’ll share with our community.
We’re so grateful to all the community members who’ve stepped up to support our work during this difficult time.
And to The Sweet Potato, who like us, believe that eating healthy (and deliciously) is a right, not a privilege!
To learn more about The Stop Community Food Centre, and our food security work in West end Toronto, visit our website and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to see daily posts on our work and impact.