To Give or Not to Give?

CBC Almanac Interview
Tuesday, August 25, 12:30pm PDT

We (the Westside Food Security Collaborative) did our first pocket market on Friday at the South Granville Seniors Centre in Vancouver and it was a great success for a first effort. The seniors who came were very enthusiastic about the markets and happily bought up the purple radishes, bags of salad mix, golden plums, apples, beans, fennel, chard and so much more. Read more about pocket markets in the Pocket Size Solutions post below.

The Courier, our local community paper covered it beforehand and that sparked some interest from CBC Radio. I did the first interview last Monday on the Early Edition. A lot of people who came to the market heard about it there. The second interview is on Almanac at 12:30 pm tomorrow (Tues. Aug 25) and it is broader in scope. It will run 15 minutes or so. Almanac is a province wide show so if you live in BC, you can tune in on your local CBC AM station.

The show will be a call in, the theme is: To Give or Not to Give? It is based on a tour that I am doing tomorrow night called The Gauntlet (see August Offerings post below). This is a loaded question and of course not at all a black and white issue. It is also an opportunity to speak out about the importance of not only continuing but increasing funding to service providers and groups working on food security during this economic downturn. I encourage you to call in to add depth and insight to the discussion.

I will also be shamelessly plugging a talk that I’m doing up in Kelowna on Sept. 2nd, based on the exploration of the food system we have been doing here; work that can be done in any neighbourhood. Here’s the info (more to come on it soon).

Feeding Ourselves: How Do We Fare?
An Evening with Spring Gillard
author, Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator

Wed. Sept 2, 2009 7 pm to 9pm
Kelowna Downtown Library, 1380 Ellis Street

Presented by Central Okanagan Community Gardens, Central Okanagan Healthy Food Council, Interior Health, Okanagan Greens Society.

Free admission. For more information: grmellor@uniserve.com or info@gardenheart.ca/.