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 [log in to unmask]