Limited storage spaces – let alone refrigerated spaces – are regarded as one of the primary challenges faced by a majority of non-profit community organizations, one that constraints their food procurement and food planning capacity. Their organizational infrastructures were not necessarily designed with ‘food’ in mind. It is not easy for individual organizations to invest in increasing storage capacity with limited resources.
What if we had a storage space that is shared and accessed by multiple organizations? What if we had a community infrastructure in the neighbourhood that can be repurposed and used as a shared storage space? It is in this context that the Community Freezer idea emerged.
Community freezers have been used with some success in northern communities to provide access to the hunting harvest for people in town with food security challenges. In Hopedale, Labrador, the community freezer provides the storage needed for distribution of community food. Another beautiful one is carved into the permafrost at Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. In Parkdale, we are exploring a southern version of this shared infrastructure.