Meet Lakehead Students Cycling Across Canada As FOOD RIDE
Adrian and Megan at the Saskatoon Food Bank earlier this month. Submitted photo
This summer, two Lakehead University students will cycle coast to coast across Canada, cooperatively organizing 22 food drives along the 10,000 km route.
Under the name FoodRide, the team strives to raise more than $100,000 in food and monetary donations for Canadian food banks. Donations will be distributed between community and campus food banks in the cities hosting the drives.
“We aim to create an open dialogue around food security,” explains FoodRide cyclist Adrian Arts. “Food banks were created as a temporary emergency service in the early 80s and are now a daily necessity to a growing population. As a country we need to re-evaluate how we feed ourselves and where that food comes from.”
The journey begins Thursday, April 25, 2013 in Victoria, BC, and ends with a final food drive in St. John’s, NFLD, on Sunday, Sept. 8.
Approximately 900,000 Canadians relied on access to food banks in an average month in 2011, according to the recent Food Banks Canada report, Hunger Count 2012. Findings of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council’s report from its Special Rapporteur on the right to food (in Canada) suggest that many Canadians report being hungry, but are not eating due to lack of financial means.
The report states that the growing inadequacy of access to safe, healthy food in many parts of Canada brings into question the foundations of Canada’s food security and the path the country is heading down.
The FoodRide team brings action to the issue by cooperatively organizing food drives with community and campus food banks in every province. Although FoodRide will not cycle through the territories, online donations to the cause will be shared with food banks in the territories’ capitals.
The public is invited to meet Adrian Arts and Megan Clark – Lakehead students who are cycling across Canada to collect non-perishables and money for food banks.
Adrian and Megan will be collecting donations at:
Location: Safeway on Dawson Road in Thunder Bay
Date: Sunday, June 23, 2013
Time: 10 am to 4 pm
