We are thrilled to announce that PARC, as a lead organization of a collaborative grant, was awarded the grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to conduct a two-year community food assessment study “Community Food Flow” – how food gets to Toronto’s neighbourhoods, particularly to populations with food access challenges – and to incubate pilot projects to create more effective and sustainable flows of healthy food to all communities.
By developing a better understanding of existing food distribution networks, the Community Food Flow project aims to create a strong network of distributors and community members with experience in developing innovations around food distribution and addressing together problems of gaps and inefficiencies in community food flows, particularly to food insecure groups. The project explores all sources of food for food insecure groups, and will therefore be able to accurately identify the bottlenecks in the community food system.
The project uses a community food assessment approach that will rely on an innovative combination of partner collaboration and community-based research to ensure maximum participation by stakeholders most affected by food insecurity. This project unites collaborators and partners across the city and with stakeholders from production, distribution and consumption sectors to explore and improve community food flow.
From early next year, we will begin to roll out assessment in Parkdale in partnership with partners in the area. The Parkdale project will build on the existing Parkdale Food Network’ and other collaborations to depict a detailed map and assess food flows in the Parkdale area.