The L.E.A.F. Initiative is a Commonwell program to grow capacity and resiliency in the communities we call home.

The Sharing Place Meals 4 Change Community Kitchen

95 Dufferin St. OrilliaL3V 5S9

Target Completion Date: December 31, 2022

What is this project about?

The Meals 4 Change community kitchen will be a focal point for our organization to produce ready-made meals for low income households, homeless and street-involved individuals, seniors, youth, children, and others with social/economic barriers. It will build on the success of our surplus food recovery program by redirecting fresh produce, dairy, and meat that would normally be disposed of from local grocery partners, and using them to produce 30,000 meals per year (600 per week) for community members that need them. The community kitchen will be a brand new addition to The Sharing Place Food Centre (TSPFC) – a community-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping residents of Orillia and people living in the surrounding rural areas of Oro-Medonte, Ramara, and Severn, who are living with food insecurity. Since 1988, TSPFC has cultivated an inclusive environment for people living in poverty to access food and create positive social connections through food.

Why is this project important to the community?

In addition to providing much needed, nutritious meals for food insecure families, the kitchen will also be a community space for our community partners to bring people together to cook and share food, and will be a valuable community resource for years to come. In 2020 we conducted a food bank user survey and the #1 request was for ready-made meals. Currently, however, there is no large-scale community kitchen in Orillia - the existing kitchens are inadequate and cobbled together across a number of small community spaces, with very constrained human capacity and limited equipment to support the level of community need. This funding will allow us to launch a full-scale community kitchen directly in our new facility and become an integral space for community food programming. In addition, Meals 4 Change will be an innovative program that will not only increase access to nutritious meals, but will also increase opportunities for food bank users to actively participate as volunteer leaders in the program. As program leaders with lived experience of food insecurity, they will have consistent and intentional opportunities to provide feedback and inform the direction of our programs as a result. The Meals 4 Change community kitchen will be a key resource for addressing food insecurity in our community. According to the County of Simcoe’s Poverty Reduction Task Group, the prevalence of low income people living in Orillia is 18.3%. This is the highest in all of Simcoe County and 4% higher than the provincial average. 100% of our project participants identify as food insecure. According to Food Banks Canada, the demand for food access programming has increased 28% since 2008, and according to SMDHU, 12% of Simcoe-Muskoka households identify as having a level of food insecurity. With prices of healthy food in Ontario skyrocketing (fruit increased 19.7% since 2015; vegetables by 23.6%, according to Feed Ontario), healthy food is often not accessible. The Meals 4 Change Community Kitchen will be a significant source of food for low income/no income individuals and families for whom highly-valued produce, herbs, and meat can be difficult to afford on a regular basis. It will also be a hub for promoting community health and wellness - we will work collaboratively with other community organizations to increase awareness and understanding of the sources, nutritional benefits, and health impacts of the food we eat in a coordinated way.