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Join Food For All
We have had a busy spring season of workshops and other activities, and we will be continuing this work with our Policy Writing Teams over the summer. Below is a list of all Food for All Policy Writing Teams, as well as a short description of the focus policy areas that they are tasked with developing. If you would like to join a Policy Writing Team, or participate in helping to revise and edit the policies later in the fall, please contact us.
Community Gardens, Land and Soil
This Policy Writing Team will focus on issues relating to gardening in shared spaces, access to land for gardens, soil contamination and soil health.
Edible Landscape, Working with Private Institutions, City and NCC
This Policy Writing Team will examine issues pertaining to landscaping practices in Ottawa, including the types of plants chosen, and how public and private green spaces are cared for. This team will also look at how we can move towards an edible landscape in Ottawa.
Urban Livestock
This Policy Writing Team will focus on developing a comprehensive policy to permit small animals such as chickens, rabbits, and bees in urban areas.
Access to Food: Businesses
This Team will focus on policies targeted towards facilitating access to healthy food in all of Ottawa’s neighbourhoods. This will include zoning regulations around concentration and type of food businesses in hospitals and school zones; incentives to encourage food stores to stock healthy and where possible, locally sourced foods; encouraging healthy foods in mobile food markets and food carts; supporting the development of farm-gate sales in the City and farmers’ markets, particularly in underserved areas.
Access to Food: Getting People to Food and Food to People
This Team will look at other means of providing access to food, such as delivery services, online and phone ordering, and transportation programs that bring people to food outlets or that bring food into underserved neighbourhoods or directly to peoples’ homes. This team will also look at various transportation routes to food, including public transportation and recreational pathways.
Access to Food: Public Institutions
This Team will focus on the type and quality of food provided by public institutions, such as hospitals and City of Ottawa facilities. This team will look at local food/healthy food purchasing policies, and ways that Ottawa public institutions can better improve the quality of foods that they provide, as well as improving access to food within these institutions.
Income and the Cost of Eating (Research Group)
This Research Group will focus on the linkages between income, poverty, household food insecurity, and the social determinants of health. This Team will not be a Policy Writing Team as such, instead, they will gather information about the various policy “asks” that other groups in our community are already organizing around as they pertain to food, income, and related issues.
Food Education and Awareness
This Policy Writing Team will focus on public education and awareness about food issues in Ottawa. This includes education and awareness around the realities faced by all sectors of our food system; increasing awareness about our local food sources and supplies; awareness about linkages between household food insecurity, poverty, and health; awareness about the various food programs and solutions that we have in Ottawa already; and increasing our collective food knowledge and reconnecting with our food system. This Policy Writing Team will look for innovative ways that the City, School Boards, and the NCC can support public education and awareness on these issues.
Emergency Food
This Policy Writing Team will focus on the supports and policies required for emergency food providers, including soup kitchens, food cupboards and food banks, and other meal programs. This team will look at issues such as: linkages with local farmers and gardeners, linkages with community food programs, and ways that the City can better support emergency food programs.
Community Food Programs
This Policy Writing Team will focus on the supports and policies that will strengthen existing community food programs, and that will allow new community food programs and models to thrive. Some examples of these programs include collective kitchens; community seed and tool banks; community networks to swap, share, and sell extra garden produce; programs that support individual gardeners; programs that support households in accessing healthy food and learning about food issues; programs that develop food skills; and community food processing, storing, and education centres. This Policy Writing Team will also work closely with the Community Food Programs in Our Schools Policy Writing Team. This Policy Writing Team does not include Emergency Food programs.
Community Food Programs in Our Schools
This Policy Writing Team will look at the various linkages between schools and community food programs, and how these linkages can be strengthened and supported. This includes community-school connections around school meal programs, school gardens, school kitchens and food processing, relationships between schools and local farmers, and school programs or initiatives that reach out to students’ families and neighbourhoods. This Policy Writing Team will also look at initiatives to improve food in schools that can take place within the school without explicit involvement of the School Board or Ministry of Education. This Policy Writing Team will work closely with the Community Food Programs Policy Writing Team.
School Boards and Food Issues in Schools
This Policy Writing Team will focus on encouraging our school boards to develop and implement comprehensive school food policies. This will include strengthening relationships between Food for All and Ottawa school boards and partnering with them to develop school food policies. A comprehensive school food policy would include aspects such as the quality of cafeteria food and vending machines, food preparation facilities in schools, food education in classrooms, purchasing policies; and drinking water in schools.
Food in Schools and the Ontario Ministry of Education
This longer-term Policy Team will focus on the types of steps that we can begin to take to develop a more comprehensive change around food in schools by engaging with the Ontario Ministry of Education. Issues include: healthy foods policies, farm-to-school networks, food in the curriculum, and funding for schools to carry out food-related activities and programming.
Market Food Production
This Policy Writing Team will focus on issues specific to farmers and those producing food for sale in the Ottawa region. Some issues include protection of agricultural lands, supporting sale of local products in urban areas, and improving access to processing facilities for local foods.
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