On Thursday, November 20, 1997 4:36 AM, Lanark Health
Centre[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] wrote:

Hi Liz,

I wrote you on the fly, so I would like to follow up a bit.

There is a Canadian Association of Food banks,  there is much to be learnt
from them and much to be gained from linking your efforts with them.

I would not support anyone making their own rules, although I agree with
your philosophy would it work the other way?

Much of the work the daily bread food bank has done has supported the
anti-poverty community's advocacy work.  In numerous occasions the data
collected has been used to proved the case about the violation of basic
human rights of people living in poverty.  One example was the last time
the UN Committee on Social, Cultural  and Economic Rights met to review
Canada progress on advancing its citizen's rights as agreed to in the
Covenant evidence from food banks across Canada was presented by NGO.

In addition, the Daily Bread Food Bank is committed to advocacy on issues
that affect people's ability to buy food for themselves, this includes
advocacy with welfare departments, landlords who discriminate and
presentations to governments.  Quite frankly, I have a problem with
organizations that do not do both individual and systemic advocacy based on
the problems that affect their clients.

I will give an example:

If you see 3 people in a month that are having problems buying food because
they had to travel to Toronto for health appointments and your welfare
department will not cover the cost of travel then you need to call your
welfare department to see why they do not cover the cost and then see what
needs to happen to change their policy.  You also need to educate your
partners about what are the real issues that affect people's ability to
obtain the necessities of life and thus enjoy good health for themselves
and their children.

Sorry for the rant,  I hope this works towards understanding, I am more
then open to discussing this further,

S
> Thanks for the tip Sherryl.  I think we'll just make our own rules!
> If people are hungry, they get food.  What a novel idea!  (Not)
> Liz
>
>


--
Sherrie Tingley
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