PFF Press Release, July 2004: (please help circulate this)

 

What? You haven’t heard of Parkdale Food Front yet???

 

Parkdale Food Front (PFF) is a group out of downtown Toronto that distributes food to people on the streets and organizes donation drives for local groups that help such marginalized populations as the homeless, psychiatric survivors, youth, and other street involved communities.

 

Comprised of about ten people, depending on the week, Parkdale Food Front started cooking nutritious warm meals and giving out winter gear to people sleeping in the subzero weather. “We are essentially a group of friends who have lived downtown for years now and have had enough of walking by the homeless, feeling unable to help” says a Parkdale Food Front founder, “Its time for all of us to realize that these people are our neighbours, whether housed or not, and as such we need to include them in our constant efforts to maintain wellness in our community”. To this group, feeding the homeless is not something that need be left to the city social service infrastructure. While there are shelters, soup kitchens and some street outreach via community health centers and harm reduction projects, they strain under the immense need of Toronto’s street-involved  population, declared a national disaster only a few short years ago. PFF believes that each community member is accountable for getting involved and doing what they can.

 

The PFF core collective is made up of an eclectic mix of artists, chefs, social service providers and community outreach workers; together they prepare and distribute the meals, while constantly gathering support through their email list and website.  Done on volunteered time, it is funded on a week to week basis through whatever money they can all scrape together out of their own pockets or donations from family and friends.

 

One unique thing about this initiative, is that the meals are all vegan, which means they contain no animal products. Throughout the winter most of the meals have been hearty and flavorful chili and stew, packed with veggie vitamins and protein. They also give out bagels, juice and fresh fruit. Though the food is vegan this isn’t a primary focus for food outreach. “We believe that we make healthy, delicious and filling meals that happen to be vegan” explains a PFF, “but we do not talk about veganism to the people we distribute to. The food speaks for itself.”

 

Another distinct characteristic of Parkdale Food Front is that it is truly a no strings attached project –in other words there is no underlying agenda, other than providing hungry people with nourishing meals. There are a number of churches that do similar sorts of charity work but preaching is intimately linked to their generosity. PFF wishes more people would initiate “no strings attached” giving, which they believe would help to create a community of sharing in our often individualized urban environment.

 

We live in a society where individualist beliefs and the illusion that we all have the same abilities to pull ourselves up out of poverty if we really try, reign supreme. In reality rags to riches stories are truly an anomaly and although PFF are made up of people with employment, they have all seen and felt the financial struggle in some form. “We were always there to help each other out when we needed to and usually the only way we could do that was sharing food with one another. There is a real sense of security and feeling of care you get when you know through all your troubles, there are people there who at the very least wont let you starve.” Mot people, they recognize, don’t have that security, but on a local level, Parkdale Food Front does what it can. These are everyday people, taking responsibility for each other, and this type of sharing is truly a revolutionary act. “There is a quote from a woman named Starhawk” says one member of the PFF collective, “that really sums up what we’re trying to do here”. PFF is creating a community in which “Charity” [is] an unknown concept because sharing [ is] an integral  part of society, a basic expectation (Starhawk, The Spiral Dance)

 

Going strong since November 2003, PFF is seeing an increase in people, enough that they often have to leave before everyone is fed. They are presently working on securing more systematic funding and donations of food so that they can continue to meet the growing demands as word spreads on the street about the crew with the best veggie stew in town!

 

Find out more about Parkdale Food Front, read their weekly updates and wish list, and get involved by visiting their website at www.pff.bravehost.com or contact the collective by email at  parkdalefoodfront@hotmail.com.