Dear Staff, Board and Volunteers of John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights,
Firstly, I want to thank you all for all the hard work and effort this year. JHC continued to help hold the community as we transitioned out of the COVID response efforts. So much has been accomplished, and we have had, and continue to have, an incredible impact on our community as we strive to build a human rights city; a place where all belong, are valued and participate.
Read MoreThe first shoot for the documentary Journey For Justice was an introduction to Mahamad Accord. I haven’t seen Mahamad since 2017 so there was a lot of catching up to do. Our team developed some questions for him to answer, with questions highlighting Mahamad’s advocacy work and his experience asking for Justice on unsolved murders from 2007-2014. The location to meet Mahamad was at GUUTO Somali restaurant. GUUTO is also a coffee shop and Mahamad had a coffee ready. I also shot an exterior shot of Mahamad walking into GUUTO Restaurant.
Read MoreThe aim of the Pantry was to create a safe place for in-need community members to access free food within the Alberta Ave. With the barriers put up for families to access food through the schools and the deepening of the COVID pandemic’s impact on the most vulnerable, as a collective, our goal was to ensure dignity and access to food.
Read MoreThe Patrol emphasizes the importance of providing support to the community through non-violent, non-threatening, and non-judgemental approaches. They are a community based group that fosters a sense of safety and solidarity with a mandate that includes respect, awareness, care, compassion, outreach, and committed relationship building.
Read MoreCANAVUA offers many services and programs that are deeply integrated within the community. For example, they offer volunteer placements, capacity building, driver training courses, and they also have a Community Service Learning (CSL) collaboration with the University of Alberta. More importantly, they operate a food bank in Edmonton’s Francophone community, in La Cité Francophone.
Read MoreThe Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (MCHB) is a cooperative that empowers cultural minority individuals and their families to realize their full potential to live freely and peacefully in a just society that is inter-culturally secure through cultural brokering practice.
Read MoreI remember meeting some pretty cool women at the event for the first time, not knowing how I would come to work alongside them in the next few years. I met Roxanne, a fierce disability rights activist, and Ruthann, a leader in promoting psychological safety in workplaces. And, I learned about the struggles and resistance of women - those that identify as white, as women of color, as immigrants, as settlers, and beyond - that I had not heard before, despite some even being colleagues or friends.
Read MoreThe following is a simple dialogue plan that you can implement in your home community to build bridges between grassroots individuals and agencies working to affect change around food security.
Read MoreIn Regina, stakeholders engaged in the conversation all agree that there is an increasing need for emergency food response while also a strengthening of local food systems through collaboration and community building for longer term sustainable change.
Read MoreThe current realities around income support keep people in a constant state of struggle and food response programs are not always aware or cater to the unique needs of people nor do they provide enough food. People can spend the majority of their time trying to secure enough food from multiple sources which is not dignified nor a good use of people’s time and resources.
Read MoreFood Insecurity has long been an issue that spurred the opening of the first Food Bank in Canada, located right here in Edmonton, Alberta in 1981. Yet after 40 years, we are no closer to ending food insecurity and hunger despite exhaustive campaigns and events throughout the year with the constant ask for donations of money, food and time.
Read MoreThroughout September to November 2021, a team from Red Deer and area came together to reflect on racism, hate and discrimination.
Read MoreIn the summer of 2020, the West Hub of Righting Relations (constituted by partner agencies and individuals from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) conducted outreach across the country through the Righting Relations National Network to gather thoughts and perspectives on food security across the country to provide inspiration for education and advocacy on how we can collectively innovate to shift our food systems.
Read MoreThe JHC Community Kitchen was created as a way to address systemic food insecurity in amiskwaciwâskahikan (aka Edmonton). We have found that access to nutritious food has been pushed to the margins for many people in our communities.
Read MoreHunger and malnutrition impair health, reduce resiliency to disease and are linked to depression. This means the world’s poorest people struggle the most to live long and healthy lives.
Read MoreThe 2030 Agenda focuses on building capacity, education and action across the Canadian Prairie provinces in order to address the Sustainable Development Goals from the grassroots up. It is an effort to foster connections between individuals, initiatives, agencies and networks doing food security, anti-poverty, anti-racism and gender equity work across the Prairies.
Here are some calls to action that can help us with food sustainability.
Read MoreA team of community members from various sectors and backgrounds came together in Fall 2020, with the desire to address the prevalence of ongoing anti-Black racism within Muslim communities, spaces and institutions in the Edmonton area. An attempt in the Summer of 2020 by Al Rashid Mosque to address issues that are embedded in racial injustice showed the lack of community preparedness and understanding of Black issues and how that permeates in a multitude of Muslim institutions.
Read MoreI had assumed, as a vegetarian, I would know what another vegetarian might like. But my diet is influenced by my culture and upbringing, just as someone else is influenced by theirs. This was my “lightbulb moment” - it provided the opportunity for myself, and our food response to shift to ensure we gave people choice and provided culturally relevant and dietary-specific foods.
Read MoreIn this session, we invite a team of leaders actively working to address hate, racism, discrimination, and misinformation to help us lay some context and know what supports exist when responding online. Our goal is to equip Canadian youth with the knowledge to address and respond to these issues.
Read MoreChelsea was part of the JHC team for over six years and as our education coordinator, Chelsea led, designed and facilitated an immense amount of work; from Advancing Truth and Reconciliation in Schools, Rad Educators Network, and Roots4Change. These past two years under COVID, Chelsea became a major force behind food justice work in the city.
Read More
