Episode 152 – Food Sustains Thriving Communities

On this episode, freelance producer Emily Rendell-Watson, explores the nuances around accessing food and why our goal should be to help people thrive, not just survive.

Food security is the topic for our 2023 Vital Signs report. Earlier in August, in our Hunger Happens Here episode, we talked about Edmonton’s food security landscape over the past 10 years.

We also looked at some of the day-to-day factors that play into how people can access food. Like cost-of-living increases, affordable housing, and whether culturally appropriate food is available.

In that episode our guest, Julia Tran, invited us to think about food security as something more than food for basic survival. And that’s where we’ll dive back in today, to look at how food is a major part of thriving communities.

Links:
Read our September 2023 Vital Topic: Food Security in Our Time.
Read the 2013 Vital Signs report on Edmonton Food Security.

Here is a short list of just some of the other organizations addressing food security in Edmonton:

Edmonton’s Food Bank
– Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative
– John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights – Community Food Kitchen
– E4C
– WECAN Food Basket Society

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The Well Endowed Podcast is produced by Edmonton Community Foundation.

Image for this episode is by Andrew Paul.

Transcripts by Karli Drew.


Transcript

[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.

Anna Alfonso [00:00:29] And I’m Anna...

Alfonso, ECF’s new Director of Marketing and Communications. This is a historic moment for me, Graeme. It’s my first hosting gig at ECF. Um. And now back to plug ECF, Edmonton is full of generous donors who have created endowment funds at Edmonton Community Foundation.

Graeme [00:00:47] Well done, Anna. These funds are carefully stewarded to generate money that supports charities in Edmonton and beyond.

Anna [00:00:52] On this podcast, we share stories about how these funds help strengthen our community… because, well, it’s good to be well endowed.

Graeme [00:01:00] On this episode, we dive back into food security in Edmonton.

Anna [00:01:03] Food security is the topic of our 2023 Vital Signs report. Earlier in August, in our Hunger Happens Here episode, we talked about Edmonton’s food security landscape over the past decade.

Graeme [00:01:15] We also looked at some of the day-to-day factors that play into how people can access food, like cost of living increases, affordable housing, and whether culturally appropriate food is available.

Anna [00:01:24] Right. In that episode, our guest, Julia Tran, invited us to begin thinking about food security as something more than food for basic survival. And that’s where we’ll dive back in today. Taking a look at how food is a major part of thriving communities.

[The Well Endowed Podcast jingle plays in background]

Graeme [00:01:40] Freelance producer Emily Rendell-Watson explores the nuances around accessing food and why our goal should be to help people thrive, not just survive.

Emily Rendell-Watson [00:01:48] The Edmonton Community Foundation has been exploring food security in our city through this year’s Vital Signs report. As you might remember, Vital Signs is a checkup that measures how the community is faring. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Vital Signs. So the Community Foundation is revisiting its very first topic to explore how far we’ve come on the issue of food security and where we are today. We’re going to dive back in with three guests who have kindly agreed to share their expertise and perspectives on this issue.

[00:02:20] Up first is Elizabeth Onyango, who is an Assistant Professor of Healthy and Sustainable Communities in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. She’s a community-based health researcher that focuses on what matters to populations, food security and nutrition, and social inequities and health and wellbeing of migrants. Her work also extends into intersections of gender, gender-based violence, household food security, and the associated health outcomes in minority populations. I started out by asking Elizabeth why food security is an important aspect of healthy and sustainable communities.

Elizabeth Onyango [00:02:55] Without food, uh, there’s no way people’s health can be considered to be good. And, um, as we talk now, I think there are lots of people that are really experiencing food insecurity, either as a result of, um, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, uh, that are still being felt to date. Uh, and then also because of, um, the high inflation that is being experienced, I think more or less globally. And, uh, at times we tend to, uh, think that, uh, food insecurity or lack of food is another part of the world’s, uh, challenge. But it’s actually true that, uh, within the Canadian context, we are seeing that, uh, a lot of minority groups or minority, uh, communities are experiencing food insecurity. And because of that, that’s making these particular communities to be unhealthy. And when you talk about, uh, unhealthy, uh, this is in relation to, uh, having healthy diets or balanced diets that, uh, should boost their immunity and, uh, keep them protected from certain health issues and make people be actively involved in community activities or community services.

Emily [00:04:10] When we talk about food sovereignty and how that relates to food security, why is food sovereignty so important and what does it look like to move from food security to food sovereignty?

Elizabeth [00:04:23] So when we talk about food sovereignty, we are really referring to, uh, people’s right, uh, to healthy and culturally appropriate foods. And even to be able to have these particular foods produced in, uh, an ecologically, uh, kind of, uh, way that sustains the environment. So looking at food as, uh, a human rights, uh, issue and looking at it as something that a person themselves need to have a say. They need to have some sense of control on what comes to their dinner tables or what comes to their houses as food that they eat is quite, quite important. So just, um, connecting that to food, uh, security or food insecurity, uh, you’ll find that food security in itself, there are four aspects. So there’s access, availability, uh, stability, and then utilization.

[00:05:19] So… moving further to not just dwell a lot more on, um, uh, these four variables. In thinking about food sovereignty, our aim is to ensure that we look at this as a human rights issue, and we allow people to have a say and some sense of control on what they eat and what comes to their tables. I believe that looking at food as a human rights issue that is in relation to food sovereignty would allow us to understand the needs of these unique groups that we have in the country and adjust or even, uh, modify our food systems so that we can be able to accommodate the needs of these, uh, particular groups.

Emily [00:06:01] When you talk about adjusting, you know, some of our food systems, what does that look like? Can you give me some examples?

Elizabeth [00:06:08] Uh, working alongside the communities that are most, uh, at risk of, uh, experiencing food insecurity. Talking to people, identifying the kinds of vegetables, the kind of fruits that are familiar to them, and exploring ways that we can make these particular foods, or even exploring how these particular foods can be grown within Alberta, within Edmonton. So in relation to engaging, uh, in this space, I think there are a number of challenges that, um, have been witnessed. So number one is, uh, land access, and that’s one of, um, uh, the areas of capital that is required. So for people to access land, people to access the kind of resources that they need. For example, machineries, if you want to do some kind of, um, uh, large scale production, I think if you don’t have, uh, the capital, it really becomes hard for you to succeed in the process of, uh, uh, doing, uh, or engaging in agriculture.

[00:07:09] And another challenge that I think, uh, has also been talked about a lot or, uh, written about is, uh, how to access seeds and just making sure that we have some systems in place to allow for, uh, meaningful engagement of these particular groups within, uh, the production system. And then also in having a say in what is being produced. And, uh, I’m giving just, uh, an example of, um, uh, the Amaranth leaf, which is eaten across diverse groups of, uh, African immigrants who share, uh, this particular kind of, um, vegetable leaf. So identifying a lot of those kinds of vegetables and fruits that can survive in this particular context is important if we are to engage in diversifying the food systems that we have here.

Emily [00:08:00] I’d like to finish off with this question. What does food mean to your cultural community?

Elizabeth [00:08:07] So as an African immigrant, food… is quite, quite central to most, uh, of the activities or, uh, the lifestyle of, uh, Africans. And I think it’s— it cuts across to most cultures, but I’ll talk in relation to the African community. So when people gather and you are gathered over food, there’s a lot of, uh, meaning that’s, uh, generated or created, um, around food. And it… it acts as a connection point. And that’s why in certain cultures within the African community, if somebody offers you food, you are expected [laughs] to have the food.

[00:08:49] And that’s where engaging in community, uh, kind of work… if you go doing global health kind of research in that particular context and somebody offers you food and you don’t really, um, engage with them in that process, then they feel like you have rejected, uh, them and you’re not, uh— you’ve not welcomed them to be part and parcel of you so— or even of your research or whatever you’re doing. So when it comes to food, it’s quite central to the African culture. And, uh, connecting over food, uh, is very important, especially with mental health, uh, building some strong social connections. So it’s… it’s something good in terms of, uh, improving or even, uh, ensuring that people have— improve on their wellbeing, improve on their health.

Emily [00:09:41] That was Elizabeth Onyango. She’s an Assistant Professor of Healthy and Sustainable Communities in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta.

Next, I’d like to introduce you to Celia Jingyi Luo. She’s the Food Justice Action Coordinator at the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative. Celia is also a dietician and is passionate about food as a means for connection rather than division. You might remember that during the last Vital Signs segment we heard from Julia Tran who touched on some of the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op programs like the Grocery Run and Care For All. The Co-op has a dynamic suite of food security strategies. Feed, Grow, Innovate, and Advocate.

Here is Celia, who will start off by telling us more about Grow.

Celia Jingyi Luo [00:10:25] So currently our focus in “Grow” very much involves connecting our family to different growing spaces and opportunities, particularly, uh, within the urban setting because we know many of our clients, um, have struggled with transportation. So we wanted to focus on the urban setting, uh, opportunities to reduce the barrier of, uh, participations. And we work with stakeholders like Edmonton Urban Farm, Peri-Urban Farm, McCauley Community Orchard and Gardens. And we connect our family, uh, to those growing, uh, opportunities so they can have access to some growing spaces where they can get to grow their favorite vegetables, especially the things that they really miss from back home that are not always easy to find.

[00:11:18] And we also see this as a form of self-expression and knowledge and cultural exchange because growing is a really joyful, healing, and fun activity for many of our clients. It does provide opportunities to meet new people and learn new skills and share new skills with others. And it is also an opportunity to share wisdom and knowledge across different generations or even across different cultures.

Emily [00:11:45] What about advocacy and knowledge mobilization? How is that integral to this as well? And what does that look like in terms of the work you do at Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op?

Celia [00:11:56] At Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative, we feel that, um, giving the gift of food like emergency food, uh, hamper programs like our Grocery Run is very much just the beginning. Organizations like us working towards creating more [inaudible] food access. I do want to acknowledge that emergency food programs, like our Grocery Run, is not enough to end food insecurity. Even if there is enough food to meet demand, providing food is not going to solve the causes of food insecurity, unfortunately.

[00:12:33] And while Grocery Run is positioned as a short-term, individual level approach to food insecurity for the ethnocultural population, uh, that we serve at [Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative], we really do need to invest in long-term, systemic level approaches, advocacy, and research. And we have joined hands with other organizations nationally working together to advocate for change. And we did that with the hope of moving from a reactionary model to almost a preventative model. And I think we are very lucky that our work in the past, like the Persimmon Project and our Grocery Run project, where we get to serve people on the ground and have very close, uh, interactions with them and our cultural broker teams really provide us a good foundation where we get to engage them and then, uh, also use that knowledge to engage in advocacy and knowledge mobilization work.

Emily [00:13:43] That was Celia Jingyi Luo, the Food Justice Action Coordinator at the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative.

And given the conversation about growing, you might be interested to know that the 2013 Vital Signs report found that there were over 80 community garden sites in Metro Edmonton at the time.

Our final guest is Renée Vaugeois, the Executive Director of the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights in Edmonton. The John Humphrey Centre advances human rights through education and dialogue, and it helps people understand how to advocate for their own rights. Renée also co-authored the Agenda 2030 Edmonton Food Security Report.

I began by asking Renée about how the John Humphrey Centre is involved in helping people access food.

Renée Vaugeois [00:14:29] During COVID, we were front-end involved in supporting kind of distribution of food and working with different agencies on making sure… Edmontonians were, especially those that were isolated who had disabilities, people who were, uh, houseless, were able to access food. So we were really working to mobilize a lot of mutual aid and grassroots work, um, throughout Edmonton. But… but since kind of COVID, we’ve really kind of taken a step back. And now our role is not necessarily about direct service of food. We’re still working with a lot of our partners to kind of build their capacity because really, a lot of them grew out of the work that we were doing.

[00:15:06] So we as a… a stronger organization are supporting— Like, some of them getting registered as nonprofits and building their organizational structure. But really, our goal now is recognizing and seeing all the challenges around food as we’re really trying to create space where we can strengthen, uh, connection and collaboration between the different agencies and groups, but also really push on… kind of decolonizing approaches to food distribution in the city. So there’s that piece about food distribution, but there’s also, like, the bigger picture of looking about. Like, what does food sovereignty mean and how do we start to shift our perspective around poverty and food access?

Emily [00:15:43] Yeah. So when you talk about, like, decolonizing approaches, can you tell me a little bit more about that work an-and how you’re… working collaboratively with some of those partners?

Renée [00:15:54] Well, there’s a… a few things that come to mind when we talk about that. And the— one of the— one of the things that immediately comes to my mind when I think about decolonizing is there’s— there tends to be, in the charitable sector, a very blanketed approach to how we distribute food and how we provide charity, uh, to communities. So “here’s your box, you know, go… go for it.” And expecting… kind of people to be able to access. But not being conscious of how trauma may impact people’s ability to connect in with a mainstream agency. Um, how, you know, identity factors can play into people being, um, a little bit more weary or, um… nervous about coming to agencies for food. And so decolonizing to me is really about starting to meet people where they’re at and in different ways. And so, uh, ways not to expect that everybody’s gonna, y-you know, feel safe coming to the Food Bank.

[00:16:48] Um, and… and to understand that even just the slight, uh, request for identification can cause certain communities to fully step back and reconsider even asking for help in the first place, such as undocumented folks, such as folks who may be transgender. We heard so many of these stories during COVID, but the other element of that is that it means kind of like getting out to where people are at, I-I think. A lot of the work that emerged out of COVID and the responses that are happening in the agencies that we work with, I think of groups like Nék̓em or Bearclaw, um, or Canavua, is they are the ones closest and connected to the community who needs the food, but they’re also trusted. Um, there’s a sense of care and family and kinship that doesn’t exist, say, for example, with somebody who’s gonna maybe go to a larger agency for support.

[00:17:39] And so these agencies are working and supporting these groups that are very grassroots and culturally appropriate, that have a different worldview and have a different perspective of how they even engage with the people that are reaching out to them for support. And I think it’s also recognizing that people who are often the most vulnerable or those that are traditionally excluded, um— we have to trust that people go to the places that they feel comfortable going to. So we can’t force people all to one place. Um, I— we have to create strategies where we allow people to be safe, um, where their entry point into requesting food is, um, accepted and dignified. And so that’s what it means to me.

[00:18:23] I think the warehousing approach to accessing food only allows a certain segment of the population who feels comfortable enough to go into those spaces. And, um, there is a lot of shame and there’s a lot of guilt and there’s so many emotions behind being able to access food, but part of this also speaks to, like, mental health an-and for us to be able to provide food in a manner that is more appropriate or dignified allows us also to support the mental health and wellbeing of people, which is a foundation to… to addressing issues around poverty. So that’s kind of, I guess, my reflections on that question.

Emily [00:19:04] When you’re working with partners and thinking through some of the strategies that— you know, how can you… shift things so that it’s not this one size fits all approach, what are some of those changes that you’re looking at making and… and how does that implementation actually get rolled out?

Renée [00:19:25] Hmm. Well, I think a lot of it is one: we need to recognize and value those folks that are working on the front lines who do it kind of on their own, um, accord. Like, when you look at Bearclaw, when you look at Nék̓em, when you look at groups like our initiative, we together, these are folks that are… rightly connected into the community, but they get zero support from, you know, funders or… or anything like that. We’ve played a role of kind of being able to be an organization that has access funding to support them directly and act as a fiscal agent. But— And I know the City of Edmonton has recently tried to explore the idea of, like, “Okay, well, let’s try to fund some of these mutual aid agencies.” But they’ve done it in a six-month pilot approach, which, um, you know, these organizations build this work and then after six months they’re left high and dry again, which actually is really detrimental to them in the community.

[00:20:18] So for me, it’s about recognizing these very frontline people who are doing this work, who are connected to community, who live it every day and value that and build solidarity with that. It doesn’t have to be a competition about dollars, but there are ways that, um, those organizations can work really well with groups like the Food Bank, Bent Arrow, like other groups in order to build responses that are appropriate right at the frontline, but also maximizing and using the capacities and resources of the larger agencies. So there’s one piece is the… the… the way that collaboration happens and the way that trust happens. And part of that, that people need to recognize, is a lot of those folks that are working at the frontline and at the roots, those are folks with lived experience. There’s— there’s a lot of trauma, um, that can come in— come into play with that.

[00:21:07] And there’s also— You know, part of working in poverty from my lens is that there’s a piece about, I don’t know the right word for it, but social norms. So for example, you have a professional nonprofit, um, and you have a very grassroots agency who has folks who are more… I’d like to say about even myself, a little bit more rough around the edges, let’s say, and are working in the daily of the trauma that exists in community. There has to be, um, understanding and acceptance there. And I find often there’s not. And I’ve seen so many circumstances where folks who are working at the frontlines are excluded from the agencies or from decision-making tables because they don’t have necessarily, maybe, the appropriate social etiquette that certain groups are looking for in that space. And they take offense to it rather than embracing it and recognizing that we all come into this space with our different experiences and backgrounds.

[00:22:02] So that’s a big piece. But— And then just another piece of this question about what does it look like? To me, like, one of the things that we jumped on right away, we worked with Bethel Church down in kind of the… the Norwood, Alberta Ave. area, and with some partners like, um, Arts on the Ave, we built kind of a bit of a new approach where it was, like, an open pantry where we got distribution of the— coming in from the Food Bank. And we allowed people to come in and pick what was appropriate to them because I always— you know, they’d hear these frustrations that people would be like, “Oh, well, we give them a hamper and they don’t even eat half of it.” Well, just give people the opportunity to select what they want. And actually what happens is actually people take less, we have less waste. And we were able to build other supports around that. We started having the Edmonton Police Service come in and be available, and they brought clothes. Uh, we brought the City of Edmonton social workers. So we kind of created this little beautiful hub and it became a community, um, where people felt safe and they didn’t feel judged.

[00:23:01] So there’s just different ways that we can approach these things and taking our lens around food waste and what that looks like. And I think— Sorry, I just wanna add one other thing about this. But it’s also about, like, appropriate healthy food is the decolonization approach for me because I have to say, every time I had to drop a food hamper off and I was giving Jolly Rancher cereal to people who could barely— that couldn’t afford to eat, that did not feel good.

[00:23:25] So there’s also something about how we have to look at our food systems. What we’re feeding people, how are we creating in different kind of environments, what kind of approaches are we taking around food sovereignty and urban… gardening and farming? Community gardens? Great idea, but there’s so much farther that we can go in terms of how we create access to food in our city. And I’m not quite sure we have the willingness to go there. Um, like, we have the planting in boulevards now, but it’s planting flowers. How about we start to get a little bit more creative with how we use our land, how we use the… the ring road around the Henday. You know, there’s so much more that we can do, and I just feel like we get so constrained in our liability culture that we never kind of go to where we could go with these things.

Emily [00:24:09] In connection to what— some of the things that you were just referring to, is this element of burnout— is one way to describe it, but in the food security space and some of these organizations when you’re talking about frontline workers, what does that look like in terms of the current landscape? And can you talk about that challenge a little bit?

Renée [00:24:30] Yeah. So many different approaches that I can look at. An-and just recently, uh, in Edmonton, we’ve lost, uh, a real… a real hero who was at the frontlines doing this work. Vee Duncan. And he was the one that kind of grew the Nék̓em, um, group, which is still moving strong despite his loss. But, um, that… that work at the frontline when you’re constantly surrounded by struggle, but yet you may be being squeezed by the resources that you have available, but also you have people in community who seem to expect that you can provide, uh, so much. There’s so much weight that comes with that, trying to navigate people’s trauma in their interactions with you and supporting them an-and getting the food, but also, you know, not being able to get them enough or having to draw boundaries about what they can do.

[00:25:19] I was looking at our food security report and I was reminded of some of the conversations, how hard it was for people to say, “We don’t have enough to give people, so we’re having to put boundaries around that and it feels terrible.” Um. And so you really carry this… where you’re kind of pulled and constrained in between two places where you know and you see people who have need, but yet you can’t necessarily provide all you have. And if you think about the people who are working in food security and at the frontline, they have not had a break since COVID hit. Even before that, you know, and I think of the numbers of, uh, food insecurity is rising consistently, um, and it’s not getting easier.

[00:25:58] I— They— There’s not a light at the tunnel and it’s not necessarily a-a-a working area that people, um, get paid well, thrive in. Uh, they’re constantly working… [emphasized] constantly working, but also, coupled with that, we don’t kind of create spaces for these folks to just, like, unpack the heaviness of that work. You know, you go in, you do what you need to do, you head home, you’re carrying all that weight with you, you have nowhere to unpack it. It can also create a bit of a hardness sometimes in people, which can then impact your work and how you treat people, um, and how you engage with people because it’s heavy, it’s really heavy work. And a lot this heavy work that we do in community, uh, we don’t recognize the need for us to wrap around and support the workers. An-and this is something, I think, is really critical, and I’ve seen a lot of groups, you know, they’re having to shut their… their… their doors down around the food, and it’s a hard decision that they make, but they’re— they make it because they just— they’re barely surviving. And I think about and I feel for all the folks at the Food Bank all the time, because I-I think they haven’t had a break and it’s just getting heavier all the time.

Emily [00:27:07] When we talk about, like, advocacy and… how this collaborative approach fits into it, do you see that as part of the solution in terms of how we move forward a little bit? And not this mindset of just keeping heads down and working, but kind of thinking about these bigger solutions so that some of these challenges don’t continue to persist.

Renée [00:27:31] Yeah, absolutely. And I think… what shocked me the most about the food work was, um, the territoriality and the politics, um, around food. I-I found it quite shocking, to be honest. And if there was any area that I felt there would be this desire to collaborate and work together, I just didn’t see it. And I realize that that comes from a lot of the weight of the work. But I think in— for us to really build forward, you know, just in terms of food distribution an-and that direct support, uh, to people, there’s so much efficiency and streamlining we could do if we actually just played to the different skills that existed within the different groups.

[00:28:13] So, for example, those mutual aid groups and what skills they bring and the access that they create versus the larger agencies and what they have. So there’s real potential for streamlining, creating efficiencies for us to kind of be able to hold each other. Um, but there’s such a distrust, there’s such a… a tension, I find, within, uh, the different groups and agencies working around food, which we need to get past. So, you know, we’re just trying to even create these really simple spaces where we come together and we’re, like, reflecting together and we’re growing together.

[00:28:47] Last week, we took a team out to Lady Flower Gardens, which is north— northeast Edmonton, just to sit there. Let’s hear about, like, their ideas about food security and where we could be going. And they… they contribute so much to the Food Bank. They’re amazing. But it gave us that space also just to start to know each other better. We’re slowly creating these spaces where it’s like, “Oh, I know you Alex from the Young Agrarians.” Okay, we can start to see how we work together because unless we get to know each other and build those spaces where we can kind of unpack and grow together, we’ll never understand how we could effectively work together.

[00:29:19] And I think that’s what people don’t understand. You can’t just create food coordinating meetings at the city table and just expect collaboration to happen. It is a slow process and it— all effective collaboration comes through relationship. And relationship doesn’t just happen. It’s something that we need to cultivate. And that’s something that, uh, we at the John Humphrey Centre are super devoted to, is just continuing to create that space. The trick is… whether folks will come to the table ’cause I find with the John Humphrey Centre, the people who trust us are the people who are working at the frontlines, the people who are, you know, on the ground. Whereas some of the mainstream agencies are maybe a little bit distrusting of us, um, an-and don’t necessarily fully come to the table.

[00:29:59] So we have this really fun balancing act that we try to do, um, to remain neutral and bring people together. But I think it’s the foundation. If we don’t have collaboration, I don’t think we can build the efficiencies we need to meet the demand that… that is reality, but also to create solutions that are more sustainable. I don’t really like that word, but that… that are really based in, like, empowering and building community versus just doing charity ’cause charity is— it’s not the way to go and we have to think differently.

Emily [00:30:29] That was Renée Vaugeois, the Executive Director of the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights in Edmonton.

[The Well Endowed Podcast jingle plays in background]

As you digest the conversations we’ve had about food security during this episode, I encourage you to go back and read the 2013 Vital Signs report and the recently released Vital Topic, Food Security in Our Time. They’re both available at ecfoundation.org/initiatives/vital-signs.

Graeme [00:30:58] Thank you to Emily Rendell-Watson for bringing us this story. And to our guests: Dr. Elizabeth Onyango, Assistant Professor, Healthy and Sustainable Communities, School of Public Health, University of Alberta—

Anna [00:31:10] Celia Jingyi Luo, Food Justice Action Coordinator at Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative—

Graeme [00:31:18] And Renée Vaugeois, Executive Director, John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights.

Anna [00:31:23] You can find our current Vital Topic, Food Security in Our Time, at ecfoundation.org/vital-signs, and we’ll have the link in our show notes.

Graeme [00:31:33] We are hard at work to develop the third Vital Topic of the year, looking at the future of food security. And stay tuned for the launch of our full report. It’ll be released on November 9th.

Anna [00:31:42] In the meantime, don’t forget to check out ECF’s youth grants and student awards, and you can visit our blog for even more great community stories.

Graeme [00:31:50] Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thanks for sharing your time with us.

[The Well Endowed Podcast music plays in background of outro]

Anna [00:31:54] Yeah, thank you. If you enjoyed it, please share it with everyone you know.

Graeme [00:31:58] And if you’ve got time, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We really love hearing from you.

Anna [00:32:03] We certainly do! Send us a hi on Facebook. You can see some pictures and share your thoughts.

Graeme [00:32:09] Thanks again for tuning in. We’ve been your hosts, Graeme Lummer—

Anna [00:32:13] And Anna Alfonso.

Graeme and Anna [00:32:15] Until next time!

Andrew Paul [00:32:17] The Well Endowed Podcast is produced by Edmonton Community Foundation—

Lisa Pruden [00:32:22] And is an affiliate member of the Alberta Podcast Network.

Andrew [00:32:25] This episode was edited by Lisa Pruden.

Lisa [00:32:27] You can visit our website at TheWellEndowedPodcast.com.

Andrew [00:32:31] Subscribe to us on iTunes—

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

Andrew [00:32:35] Our theme music is by Octavo Productions.

Lisa [00:32:37] And as always, don’t forget to visit Edmonton Community Foundation at ecfoundation.org.

[theme music continues playing for a few seconds after dialogue ends]

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