Capacity Development: Building Hope

Changing the face of poverty and end inequities across Northern Ontario.

Our collective goal is not only to end hunger, but elevate social justice, while fostering our shared economic prosperity. Food autonomy is central to our regional network goal, that is imbedded in our rich cultural diversity. The plan is to create a bright future for our grandchildren, and all peoples.

We plan to change the cost of food, fill gaps in the food chain, and make economic development improvements, through food security initiatives.

This is a big strategic piece that links the north under a capacity building umbrella.

With…

The RFDA improves social and economic wellness of our north through food security, but our many partners bring a diversity of tools and mandates of their own to accomplish our collaborative goals.

The RFDA, work in collaboration with Nutrition North, Feed Ontario, Food Banks Canada, Second Harvest, Wiiche’iwaymagon and with growing awareness and support from provincial and municipal leaders. More importantly, the network is building a partnership with First Nations to build equity, that will return self-determination, to the peoples of the north.

By…

The RFDA is building a regional satellite food hub network across northern Ontario, into Manitoba, and up into the territories, with a focus on distribution, storage capacity, exchanges in learning, and the ownership of economic development. The goal is to put food autonomy into the hands of remote First Nation and rural community partners. Over the next seven years our goal is to achieve level 1 sustainability.

Over the past few years, the RFDA has been increasingly responding to First Nation and underserviced communities requesting emergency food shipments. Isolation and high prices have made responses to traumatic or catastrophic events, increasingly more difficult if not impossible. Climate change, supply chain challenges, and a total lack of infrastructure to accommodate healthy food within remote First Nations, has crippled community wellness and healing efforts.

Our vision is to use the multi-phase Building Hope project to accelerate community resilience: healthy children, employment opportunities around food and logistics, and the resurgence of local entrepreneurship: stores, crafts, indigenous food harvesting and trade.? What was once the practice of many generations, can be reborn, through something as simple as a return to traditional and preferred food, as recommended by elders, dieticians, nutritionists, and a new wave of young culinary specialists, across the north.