Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Vision

A community where all members are able to meet their food needs.

Mission

• To provide dignified food assistance and support to community members in northern Toronto
• To raise public awareness and provide education regarding hunger and its causes
• To engage the community in meeting its members’ food needs

Values

• Access and Inclusion – We strive to ensure that diverse members of our community have full, fair and unbiased access to our services and are included in decision-making.
• Collaboration – We are dedicated to understanding, learning from, and working cooperatively with community members.
• Integrity – We recognize the importance of being accountable and transparent in our actions and decision making processes.
• Excellence – We strive for the highest quality in all our work and for the most effective use of our resources

History of Organization

The North York Harvest Food Bank was established in 1986 as a response to the growing hunger issue in the suburban North York. First envisioned as a solution to a temporary problem, the need for North York Harvest’s services has grown as social assistance benefits have eroded and economic disparity in the inner suburbs has become more pronounced.

Faced with a problem that is only growing and in a region of the city that is relatively under-resourced, this once small organization has turned from a single-minded focus on putting food on people's tables to incorporating and engaging in broader issues of food and income security. Most recently, this has led to organizational growth at a time of unprecedented attention to food issues while at the same time the lingering effects of a devestating recession have kept demand for food assistance at an all-time high.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Over the last two years, North York Harvest has weathered a severe increase in requests for food assistance due to the economic downturn. In response, we have successfully increased the amount of food raised by 40% and grown our staff team to support the increased demand. We are proud to have provided uninterrupted support to the 60 community programs that rely on our food deliveries during these difficult times.

In recent years, we have taken steps to incorporate both income security and food systems perspectives into our work in order to present a more holistic approach towards food issues. With this in mind, we are focussed on re-visioning how our distribution facilities fit within the food system and modernizing the services provided by our food bank network.

As one of Canada’s earliest food banks, North York Harvest played a founding role in both the Ontario Association of Food Banks and the Canadian Association of Food Banks (now Food Banks Canada). We have remained independently funded with little government support for over 24 years.

Programs

>Building Food-friendly Neighbourhoods
>Harvest Academy

North York Harvest is the primary food bank for northern Toronto, distributing 1.6 million pounds of food in 2010. Our primary activity is collecting and distributing food to our agency network of 60 community food programs including neighbourhood food banks, prenatal programs, shelters, drop-ins and community kitchens. Serving the area between Highway 27, Steeles Ave, Victoria Park Ave and St. Clair Ave/Eglinton Ave, our catchment represents just over 1/3 of the geographic area of the City of Toronto and includes 6 of the City- and United Way-designated priority neighbourhoods.

In addition to food deliveries, we provide other services for our member agencies. These include:

• a collective purchasing program which allows member agencies to pool their purchasing budgets and buy food at wholesale prices using North York Harvest's distribution resources
• our Harvest Academy professional development workshop series which provides information and training for food program staff and volunteers on best practices
• ad hoc support with resource and program development

North York Harvest also delivers other community programs including:

• educational workshops for school groups on hunger and poverty issues
• seasonal garden support and garden-related workshops for six of our member agency programs
• free field trips for food program participants to local area farms
• an enhanced food bank program for residents of Lawrence Heights and surrounding neighbourhoods which offers one-to-one supports through a full-time staff person

Building Food-friendly Neighbourhoods

Developing and building our member agency network is part of the ongoing work of our Agency Relations department. We bring a neighbourhood-based approach to evaluating new program applications and work towards achieving a mix of programming that provides for basic food assistance and that builds capacity. Presently, we support 14 neighbourhood food banks, 22 tenant-run and community-specific food banks, 8 prenatal programs, 7 shelters and drop-ins, and 6 community kitchens.

We regularly evaluate new programs using a scoring key which takes into consideration an agency's facilites, location and capacity to provide a service. We also try to incorporate information about surrounding resources and neighbourhood demographics; although, our current framework does not adequately ensure that this is applied consistently in each neighbourhood and with each program.

We are also aware of data that are not presently incorporated into our evaluation process such as the food mapping work done by Toronto Public Health and the Martin Prosperity Institute.

Funding and Program Partners

There is no designated funding associated with our agency relations work (in fact, 90% of our overall funding is fundraising-driven) and administered by a part-time employee who works 30 hours per week. Where appropriate, we work with community agencies to establish new programming or evaluate new program applications. For instance, in the Don Mills & Sheppard neighbourhood, where a local food bank is desperately needed, we have worked with their food security working group over the past 18 months to evaluate potential sites for a new service. We have been similarly active in the Bathurst-Finch neighbourhood and in Lawrence Heights, where we chair the Food Justice Working Group.

Program Impact

Since starting as a food bank with 10 emergency hamper programs, the North York Harvest agency network has grown to over 60 programs including non-food hamper programs such as community kitchens. We distributed 160,000 food hampers through our agency network last year.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

• "Half of Toronto is a ‘food desert’. One in two Torontonians lives more than one km from the nearest grocery store. Access to healthy food is linked to income, but also to proximity to a grocery store." (Toronto Vital Signs®, 2010)
• "One in ten Toronto households lives without food security. A household is food secure when every member has access to enough safe and nutritious food for a healthy life." (Toronto Vital Signs®, 2010)

Participant Vignette

The Fairview Food Security Working Group in the Don Mills & Sheppard neighbourhood has worked closely with North York Harvest to build a more food secure community. The neighbourhood already has some important food assets including one of the largest community gardens in the city and community kitchen and prenatal programming. However, residents must travel a long distance to reach an affordable supermarket and the nearest food bank is five subway stops away.

The Working Group has been working for the last 18 months to establish a neighbourhood food bank. It has pursued many different avenues in trying to secure space, some of which have circled back on themselves and none of which have been successful. While access to space is the overriding issue, there is a sense among Working Group members that if they had known more about the neighbourhood ahead of time, then they would have expended less time in getting to where they are today. A neighbourhood food plan would have provided more of a roadmap for this project and would have weighed this priority against other food programming opportunities in the neighbourhood.

Harvest Academy

The Harvest Academy provides ongoing professional development for our member agencies and prospective volunteers through learning opportunities that build skills and promote best practices. The workshops also create networking opportunities between agencies and foster a mutual understanding between member agency volunteers and service users.

The program awards credits for three component activities: attending workshops; completing an 18-hour placement; and food program enhancements. Community members work towards attaining certification as a “Community Food Program Leader” while member agencies are recognized with an “Excellence in Community Food Programming” certification.

The Harvest Academy is open to the following community members:

• Member Agency staff
• Member Agency volunteers
• People who are interested in volunteering and taking leadership roles at local community food programs

The Harvest Academy runs three sessions per year:

• Spring Session: February-May (three workshops)
• Summer Session: June-July (two workshops)
• Fall Session: September-November (three workshops)

Program Impact

Over 150 community members have participated in Harvest Academy workshop in the last two years.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

"Two-thirds of Torontonians (65.7%) reported a strong sense of belonging to their local community in 2010, a 6.3% increase from 2009."

(Toronto Vital Signs®, 2011)

Participant Vignette

"I was inspired by the passion of everyone there. It was a good eye-opener for me and a way of reflecting on how I'm handling our clients - and that they deserve more respect and understanding."

- Sylvie Guerron, participant in a Harvest Academy workshop and volunteer with St. Vincent de Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas Food Bank (one of the agencies within North York Harvest's network).