[The Well Endowed Podcast theme music plays]

Graeme Lummer [00:00:25] Hi everyone. Welcome to ECF’s Well Endowed Podcast. I’m Graeme Lummer—

Shereen Zink [00:00:29] And I’m Shereen...

Zink.

Graeme [00:00:30] Edmonton is full of generous donors who have created endowment funds at Edmonton Community Foundation.

Shereen [00:00:35] These funds are carefully stewarded to generate money that supports charities in Edmonton and beyond.

Graeme [00:00:40] On this podcast, we share stories about how these funds help strengthen our community… because it’s good to be well endowed.

Shereen [00:00:46] On this episode, we find out how food security in Edmonton has changed over the past 10 years.

Graeme [00:00:51] Food security was the subject of ECF’s very first Vital Signs report published way back in 2013. This year, on our 10th anniversary, we are revisiting that topic and taking a deep dive into Edmonton’s food security landscape to see what has changed over time, for better or worse.

Shereen [00:01:07] Hunger Happens Here is the title of the first of three Vital Topic reports to be published this year. The stats are super interesting. For example, the percentage of Albertans experiencing severe food insecurity more than doubled between 2011 and 2022.

Graeme [00:01:21] That’s huge.

Shereen [00:01:21] Yeah, it’s startling.

Graeme [00:01:23] Here’s another one. The use of Edmonton’s Food Bank has increased too. In 2013, the food bank served a little over twelve and a half thousand people per month. In 2022, they saw a record high, serving well over thirty thousand people per month.

Shereen [00:01:36] Whew, wow. Those are definitely some things to unpack there. Listeners, we’re going to do our usual Vital Signs coverage this year where we post a few episodes throughout the year to cover the findings of each Vital Topic. The topics will be launched as a full food security report later this year.

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Graeme [00:01:51] For this first episode, our correspondent, Emily Rendell-Watson, introduces us to the topic on the whole… and begins to explore what other factors play into accessing food here in Edmonton.

Emily Rendell-Watson [00:02:00] From rent to filling up with gas, the cost of everything has been on the rise. Dollars just don’t go as far when it comes to buying everyday essentials like groceries. In 2011, about 12% of Albertans experienced food insecurity. In 2022, that number jumped to just over 20%. That’s one of the findings from this year’s Vital Signs, a report that the Edmonton Community Foundation and the Edmonton Social Planning Council produce each year. The checkup aims to measure how the community is faring, while educating about the issues and providing some recommended solutions.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Vital Signs, so the Edmonton Community Foundation is revisiting the very first topic: food security… and where we are today. So what is food security? The Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations defines it as people having physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and enable a healthy lifestyle.

In a minute, I’m going to turn it over to Nneka Otogbolu, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Equity Advancement at the Edmonton Community Foundation. We started out by talking about why Vital Signs is so valuable for education, policymaking, and planning for frontline workers.

Nneka Otogbolu [00:03:25] It’s valuable because it contributes to evidence-based decision making, because where the research comes up with the data and shows what the current states are around issues, complex issues in the community, it will help educate community members by providing data and insight in various issues that are prevalent in the community. By analyzing this data… in an easy to read and digest format, members of the community will get a deeper understanding of the challenges that are faced by the community. In terms of policymakers, it’s very important to them and not that I think, I know it’s really important because it reveals patterns, trends, and disparities within the community.

Emily [00:04:15] How can Vital Signs be used as a benchmark to see these changes in the community… over time?

Nneka [00:04:23] First of all, Vital Signs can be used to establish a baseline. When you capture your data to show the current state of a community around a complex issue at a particular point in time, it provides that snapshot of various indicators such as the economic factors, education, health, social wellbeing, generally. This baseline can become the starting point for comparison in future reports. And then where you compare indicators across reporting periods, you get to see the trends, right? And you get to see where the needle has moved either positively or negatively and, um, it will help identify shifts or trends as well.

Emily [00:05:10] So, you mention being able to measure how things have changed, and that’s a great example of what the Edmonton Community Foundation is doing this year with its topic because it’s really a bit of a… a full circle one because it was initially done 10 years ago, in 2013. So tell me a little bit more. Why was food security selected as this year’s Vital Signs Topic?

Nneka [00:05:34] In 2020 when the pandemic hit, we observed that food security was one of the foremost issues being faced by the community. And this trend was noticed with the grant use or grant purpose of requests we saw coming in. At that point, we started asking ourselves questions. We knew that our first topic was— our first Vital Topic on food security was released in 2013. We knew that different interventions and programs had been created around food security issues and it was surprising to see that that was still an issue, right? And so, we had the conversation internally to say, “Hey, if we’re getting these requests from community groups, some have been in that space for years, some were new entrants, it might be good to explore the ‘why.’ Why we still have this as an issue, why move— the needle hadn’t moved? Or if it had, where was it moving to? What would we need to do as a community to solve the complex issue?”

[00:06:42] We hope to not just commemorate the 10th year of the Vital Signs project by looking back at the first topic, but we also wanted to… have a retrospective review to show if there has been any improvement or progress made in the food security space in the last 10 years. We are also mindful that 10 years ago, we didn’t have adequate data during that research and, um, hoping to see where we’re at or what we could find, and if the needle had moved in any way after 10 years.

Emily [00:07:18] I wanna talk a little bit about the plan for Vital Signs this year and what is going to be explored with food security. So, can you tell me what people are going to learn through this topic this year and what are some of the areas that you hope to explore?

Nneka [00:07:34] So at the start of this project, we had a couple of goals in mind. First and foremost was tracking progress and trends. We hoped to compare the current data with the baseline data established in the first report in 2013. And we had hoped to identify some trends and areas where food security had worsened. This way, we were hoping to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and policies implemented over the years.

Another goal we had in our mind was that we were— we had hoped to assess the sustainability of interventions. We wanted to look at measures that had been taken to address food security to see if they had been maintained and if they continued to yield positive outcomes.

And lastly, we are aware that there are a lot of organizations in the food security space and, um, we hoped to engage stakeholders and promote community participation by having groups that are working in this space, being part of the advisory committee, sharing ideas, sharing their learnings from what they’ve seen, sharing their hopes and vision for sec— um, food security in our community, and also— and reach the report with their lived realities or current realities of… of what they see on the ground.

Emily [00:08:58] I’m going to introduce you to a few members of this year’s advisory committee, which Nneka was just talking about. First up is Marjorie Bencz, who was also a member of the original Vital Signs committee that looked at food security in 2013. Marjorie is the Executive Director of Edmonton’s Food Bank. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a central warehouse which collects and redistributes food to over 300 agencies, soup kitchens, churches, schools, and other community organizations. The food bank also provides direct services to tens of thousands of people each month. Now, as you listen, you might hear noise in the background, thumps or beeps. Here’s some context from Marjorie about why.

Marjorie Bencz [00:09:41] We are in a working warehouse. So those sounds that you hear are the distribution of food. It’s trucks being unloaded, it’s food being packed and sent out on our trucks. And we have expanded our hours to try to keep up with the increased demand in our community. So we’re open ‘til eight o’clock at night four… four days a week, and we have warehouse operations on Saturday and Sunday to pack those hampers that are going out. So, it is constantly a busy, noisy place to be.

Emily [00:10:20] Let’s dive in to get Marjorie’s perspective on some of the influences on food security now versus 10 years ago.

Marjorie [00:10:27] So, certainly it’s been a little bit of a journey since 2013. We’ve seen, you know, a pandemic come through our community. Also, we’ve seen large economic changes to our, uh, community. So, for example, the oil and gas sector has been challenged over the last, you know, five years. And so, as an organization, we’ve seen increased numbers of people experiencing food insecurity in our community, we’re seeing more requests for food services in the form of hampers. We’ve also seen more, uh, community organizations stepping forward and saying, “We wanna do a little bit of work in food insecurity and helping people.” And so, there’s more people asking for food services and Edmonton’s Food Bank is trying to respond to more community groups out there on the grassroots helping to respond to food insecurity.

Emily [00:11:26] You mentioned those economic influences. What are some of those things that are causing more and more people to need help, like through Edmonton’s Food Bank?

Marjorie [00:11:35] So, there’s been some large picture drivers like the economy in Alberta. You know, the gas and oil sector is not as strong as it was a decade ago. But then there’s also pressures such as lack of affordable housing in our communities. There’s also situations where income security programs and wages have not kept up with the rate of inflation that families are experiencing.

Emily [00:12:05] What about something like climate change? How does that play into this and our availability of food?

Marjorie [00:12:12] I think you’re going to see more and more conversations about sources of our food, um, locally grown food. At the same time, for example, this last spring, the last couple months, many of our agricultural communities have been challenged with wildfires, floods, droughts just to name some of the few barriers that they’re experiencing. And that’s going to, over time, influence availability of fresh local food. It’s going to have a— an impact on the economy as well because, of course, the economy in Alberta is very dependent on agriculture as well as a… a major economic driver.

Emily [00:12:58] If you think back to 2013 and being part of that committee of that very first Vital Signs and some of those conversations that you had at that time about, uh, food security and what it meant, what it meant for Edmonton in particular… and then you think to the conversations that you had as this report came to life and, um, this… this first topic came to life, how was it different? What was it like in terms of being able to look at food security 10 years ago versus now? What are some of the other things that you noticed?

Marjorie [00:13:35] I found it— that it’s been a really interesting process because if you look at the 2013 report, there was a lot of conversations about charitable food distribution, as well as if you look at the numbers that are included in that report, you can see that the numbers are substantially lower than we are talking about now. And the diversity of influences were much smaller in our conversations in 2013. And in 2023, when we’re looking at it, we are talking about things like climate change. We’re talking about… high rate of inflation, we’re talking about what people are seeing and experiencing in their homes and in their families each and every day.

Emily [00:14:25] Tell me more about how that plays out in terms of what that looks like and how it impacts Edmontonians.

Marjorie [00:14:33] Well, I guess, I think when we did the report in 2013, we saw a more marginalized group of people needing the food bank or using the services of other charities in Edmonton. The 2013 report also talked about, um, some al-alternative ways that people could secure locally grown food and become more food secure in their own households. When we look at the 2023 report and conversations, the magnitude of the situation has grown substantially. So have the risks of increased food insecurity have increased, but there’s also increased opportunities for not only Edmonton’s Food Bank, but for the community at large to reduce food insecurity.

[00:15:29] Edmonton’s Food Bank and other… charities in Edmonton have done their best to respond to food insecurity. Having said that, the number of people who are food insecure and the depth of food insecurity at our community t— in such a way that we really need governments and other players in the community to also take their role seriously as we look for solutions to these situations ’cause they are complex. And what is really a major driver in one household as far as their food insecurity may look a little differently than another household. And again, underlying that income would be a major driver, but there’s other elements that we can look at as… as, uh, community members and as community leaders.

Emily [00:16:27] Yeah, I wanna hear more about that impact on people because it connects to so many different areas. Food is obviously a core need to survive, and so it’s… it’s so connected to so many different areas, uh, in our city and our communities. So when you talk about how food insecurity impacts people, what are some of those things that you see?

Marjorie [00:16:50] Food is key to… not only physical health, but emotional wellbeing. So… for a parent who feels that they are not able to provide food for themselves and their children, they can feel a lot of despair, anxiety, fear, frustration, a lot of negative thoughts. And those feelings can become overwhelming as they, you know, try to balance budgets, make sure there is food on the, uh, table the best they can, and those types of things. Even though the service is the best we can provide as food banks and other charitable organizations, it is never the same as a family being able to go out and buy their own food and make their own choices. And… and then it goes back to, like, you know, is it culturally relevant? Is it the food that people want and need in their households? And that whole broader conversation.

[00:17:56] So it is a major concern when people don’t have the ability to go out and purchase their own food and make their own decisions. That’s why we always try to allocate for systematic changes, uh, like increased access to affordable housing, increased income support programs, so that people can go out and buy their own food and make those decisions… the right decisions for their own household. Again, you know, we often talk about culturally relevant food and being sensitive to people’s dietary needs, but really, the best situation would be people would be able to buy their own food and participate just the same as everyone else in the community and make their own decisions around food.

Emily [00:18:48] That was Marjorie Bencz of Edmonton’s Food Bank. And now I’m going to introduce you to another member of this year’s Vital Signs advisory committee, Julia Tran.

Julia Tran [00:18:58] My journey with food security work begins with the Multicultural Health Brokers, where, um, I was part of the Food Dignity program working on a number of food security initiatives, including the Grocery Run, an emergency food access program, Care For All, a culturally focused food box social enterprise, a number of urban agriculture and growing strategies, and then knowledge mobilization work as well.

Emily [00:19:23] So in terms of food security and thinking about how that impacts us in Edmonton, why is this an issue that’s important to you?

Julia [00:19:31] Food security is something that’s really important to me because it’s connected to the fundamental health and wellbeing of our community members. Food is a basic need and it’s a fundamental human right, but when we look at food security, it’s really looking at existing food systems. So within Edmonton, there are a number of food resources and mainstream grocery stores, but our current context of high cost of living and inflation and lack of affordable housing, all of these different socioeconomic issues intersect to impact a person’s ability to have food on the table.

[00:20:06] And it’s really important to look at food security with a more nuanced understanding because food security is experienced in different ways. It can be in more subtle ways, where perhaps you don’t have the financial resources to pick exactly what you would want to purchase at a grocery store and you’re limited in terms of what you have access to, or perhaps it’s more severe and chronic where you actually have community members, such as the adult in the household, skipping meals to provide food or allow for food for the children.

Emily [00:20:35] So you’ve worked on some of the food security strategies that the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op have introduced in Edmonton over the past few years. Can you tell me about a few of those?

Julia [00:20:47] Sure. So the work of food security with the Multicultural Health Brokers really begins with a research project that was in partnership with the University of Alberta Community-University Partnership and ENRICH. And so, this research was looking at barriers to healthy weight gain as well as postpartum health. And so, they were doing this research in partnership with Northeast African communities, and what they found was these women understood the importance of healthy eating, physical exercise, emotional wellbeing. But after having immigrated to Canada, they lost a lot of these social supports that were very instrumental in providing resources such as food, childcare, and emotional support. And so, after immigrating to Canada, they were socially isolated and didn’t have the natural supports that they normally would have to be able to be well and to have physical resources like food. And it was a much broader issue than just food because this research was also looking at other intersecting factors like affordable housing and gainful employment. So, the research was looking at a broader issue of poverty.

[00:21:55] And so, very quickly the focus of the research started to look at the depth and chronicity of food insecurity and poverty, and found that a number of these women and their families were actually experiencing chronic food security where they were skipping meals, sometimes for days, to provide food for their children, or sometimes children were going to school without food. And so then one of the outcomes of the research was to implement a short-term strategy called the Grocery Run, which is based on a food rescue or charitable model where the idea was that there should be sufficient excess food within Edmonton’s food system from grocery stores, restaurants, cafés, et cetera, that could then be redirected back to the Multicultural Health Brokers’ office and then redistributed immediately to families to respond to their urgent food needs… because a lot of our frontline brokers with the Multicultural Health Brokers was spending a lot of their time on trying to access emergency food resources for families. And it was taking away from their time and capacity to be able to work and address that underlying issue of poverty and need for affordable housing and gainful employment.

[00:23:08] And so, the Grocery Run is really where we had a lot of grassroots, frontline, acute understanding of the socioeconomic reality of the families and really set the stage to look at food as an immediate need, but also what are the hopes and opportunities around food.

Emily [00:23:26] Now, the Grocery Run… is that still running?

Julia [00:23:28] The Grocery Run continues to operate at a smaller scale. The Grocery Run has endured a number of reconfigurations and changes over the years. The Grocery Run began in, I believe, 2016 and then served about seventy-six to a hundred families on a weekly basis and was actually the catalyst for Leftovers Edmonton Foundation. And then over the years, particularly during the pandemic in response to the significantly increased need for support for basic resources like food, the Grocery Runs scaled up to serve about five hundred and fifty families on a weekly basis, which is about thirty-two hundred individuals. And then it expanded to formalize a partnership with Edmonton’s Food Bank, Sun Fresh Farms, and a number of other community organizations to respond to the need for food.

Since we have transitioned to kind of looking at post-pandemic, a lot of the short-term resources have since ended. And so, the Grocery Run continues to operate, but given the limited financial resources and human resource capacity, it has scaled down to, I think, about seventy-five families per week. But that’s not to say that the need for food and immediate food support has been resolved.

Emily [00:24:42] Right. Even though it… it has had to adjust in terms of what resources are available, there’s still many more families who might need access to a program like that, I’m sure.

Julia [00:24:51] Absolutely. And I think especially now because we’re in this new context where there is no longer kind of COVID response resources or community agencies to respond. And so— and then we also have that magnified socioeconomic challenge of poverty where more and more community members are experiencing unemployment and, um, now the access to actual food resources is lessened as well.

Emily [00:25:17] So from the Grocery Run program, what were your learnings from that and how did you build onto what you took away from building that program?

Julia [00:25:28] So the Grocery Run was really a… important opportunity for us to deepen our learning about food security and how food insecurity is experienced. So because of how close we are to the community members, we were really able to generate a number of learnings, including how effective is emergency food response initiatives like the Grocery Run in terms of impacting household food security. So we are really able to look at some key elements in terms of what makes a quality food hamper, especially within the context of culturally relevant or culturally honouring food items. We are able to look at nutrition and what are the actual nutritional needs of a family and does a food hamper meet those food needs? And what is the gap? How close are we coming to that?

[00:26:13] And given the close relationships we have to community members, we are also able to engage community members to co-create and generate a number of other potential strategies that are anchored in food. And that led to Care For All, which was a culturally-focused food box social enterprise. Um, and that was piloted, I think, in… 2020 to 2021. And so, that initiative has since concluded, but that was really essential because it was looking at food insecurity along a spectrum of financial capacity. So, like we talked about, food insecurity is experienced in a number of ways. So some community members really have little to no financial resources to pay for other essential living costs like food. This is information that we learned through a number of community engagement sessions through community-based research with the University of Alberta.

[00:27:04] In May 2020, actually, at the beginning of the pandemic, we did a survey with our frontline workers regarding their active case list. And among 488 respondents, 68% were in current need of food. And 52% of families experienced a loss of employment or reduced, uh, hours because of the crisis. And then what really complemented that frontline research was another research study done in 2020 with Multicultural Health Brokers in partnership with other immigrant-serving agencies like EMCN, looking at intersections of housing and food insecurity. And amongst 324 survey respondents, 62% were paying more than 50% of their income on rent or mortgage.

[00:27:46] So when we start situating food insecurity within the context of how housing insecurity and employment intersect, it starts to make sense why community members are unable to pay for essential living costs like food. And so, when we come from that perspective, we can also think about how not all community members are on that end of the spectrum where they require, um, free of cost food support. And because of how food is a very complex, um, good, we can start to think about how there are other opportunities to respond to the food needs of families in innovative and honouring and dignifying ways where our community members are part of the solution.

[00:28:24] And so, Care For All was an example of that, and it was a… opportunity for diverse stakeholders to come together to collectively work on something. So Care For All was made up of stakeholders representing both the not-for-profit and for-profit sector. We had a corporate partner called Good Box, which provided all of the backend, um, logistics and technological logistics that not-for-profit organizations didn’t have at that time. So, that includes things like warehousing space, um, delivery, expertise within the commercial food sector to be able to access higher food supply chains, et cetera.

Emily [00:29:01] So these programs help respond to some of the changes that we’ve seen in our food landscape in Edmonton over the past decade. And we’ll continue to need programs like the ones you just mentioned to continue to respond to need, and especially, you know, as different things change, whether that’s cost of living or various challenges that impact folks in our community. When we think about those changes in our food landscape, what are the most significant ones that you’ve noticed?

Julia [00:29:32] A really essential and fundamental change in our food landscape has actually been related to perspective, um, from my opinion. And I think that’s about deepening our understanding around food and food insecurity. And so, that really relates to looking at food as more than just a basic need or a checkbox approach. It’s really thinking about how food is connected to our physical wellbeing as well as our mental, social, and emotional wellbeing as well. And when we broaden our perspective or understanding around food in this way, it creates space for innovation and for hope.

[00:30:10] And what I mean by this is when we start thinking about how food is connected to community, food is an opportunity to connect to socioeconomic opportunities as well because many of our community members are talented farmers from back home or are food-based entrepreneurs. There is a lot of opportunity there when we reframe food as not just an issue of scarcity and a resource that’s always lacking. There is also a lot of opportunity and hope that is tied to food that our community members are very excited and passionate and ready to pursue.

Emily [00:30:43] That was Julia Tran. She managed a variety of food security programs for the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op over the last couple of years.

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So this year, 2023, we’ll continue to explore the changing landscape of food security in Edmonton. Comparing the 2013 report to today’s, and then looking into the future. I encourage you to go back and read that 2013 Vital Signs report on food security and the recently released Vital Topic “Hunger Happens Here.” Both are available at ecfoundation.org/initiatives/vital-signs.

Graeme [00:31:21] Thank you to Emily Rendell-Watson for bringing us this story. And to Marjorie Bencz, Executive Director at Edmonton’s Food Bank, as well as Julia Tran, manager of the Food Dignity Program at Multicultural Health Brokers Co-operative, for sharing their time with us.

Shereen [00:31:35] And a special shout out to Nneka Otogbolu, the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Equity Advancement here at Edmonton Community Foundation.

Friends, we have all of the links for you in the show notes today. You can learn more about our guests and the organizations that are working to ensure food security in Edmonton there.

Graeme [00:31:51] As Emily mentioned, you can also find our Vital Topic “Hunger Happens Here” and a link to the original Vital Signs report from 2013. Stay tuned for upcoming food security topics later this year.

Shereen [00:32:02] We’re learning so much and we can’t wait to share it with you. Also, don’t forget to check out the links to ECF’s grants and student awards. And, of course, be sure to visit our blog for even more great stories about Edmonton’s incredible charitable sector.

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Graeme [00:32:14] Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thanks for sharing your time with us.

Shereen [00:32:18] Yeah, thank you. If you enjoyed it, please share it with everyone you know.

Graeme [00:32:21] And if you’ve got time, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It’s a great way to support the show.

Shereen [00:32:26] And come say hi to us on Facebook. You can see some pictures and tell us what you think.

Graeme [00:32:30] Thanks again for tuning in. We’ve been your hosts, Graeme Lummer—

Shereen [00:32:33] And Shereen Zink.

Graeme and Shereen [00:32:34] Until next time!

Andrew Paul [00:32:38] The Well Endowed Podcast is produced by Edmonton Community Foundation—

Lisa Pruden [00:32:42] And is an affiliate member of the Alberta Podcast Network.

Andrew [00:32:44] This episode was edited by Lisa Pruden.

Lisa [00:32:46] You can visit our website at TheWellEndowedPodcast.com.

Andrew [00:32:50] Subscribe to us on iTunes—

Lisa [00:32:52] And follow us on Twitter at @theECF.

Andrew [00:32:54] Our theme music is by Octavo Productions.

Lisa [00:32:57] And as always, don’t forget to visit Edmonton Community Foundation at ecfoundation.org.

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