World Vision Canada hosted an intimate dinner at Berkeley Fieldhouse event venue Toronto to celebrate their #hungerfree campaign.
World Vision has a strong message to celebrate and share.
We believe a hungerfree world is possible – where everyone has enough food for today and for tomorrow.
So this October to celebrate food we are asking you to join a movement to create a hungerfree world.
It’s simple. Here’s how:
- SHARE A MEAL with someone in your community, whether at home, at a big dinner party or at a restaurant. Make that meal more meaningful by donating the cost or part of the cost of the meal to help create a hungerfree world with World Vision.
- EDUCATE YOURSELF by following us throughout October. Blogs, food facts, inspiring tidbits will be coming through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all month long, so get informed and share with others!
- DONATE to World Vision’s work, ensuring everyone has the right food for today and enough food for a lifetime. Click on your country to contribute to World Vision’s work: Australia | Canada | Germany | Hong Kong | India | Kenya | Korea | Malaysia | New Zealand | Philippines | Switzerland | Taiwan | United Kingdom | United States”
Laura Dewar from World Vision presented the vision and intention of World Vision and the passion behind the evenings celebration.
“World Vision is a global organization that helps the worlds most vulnerable children to survive and thrive. It is an organization I am inordinately proud to be part of and I wanted to share with you that our motive for doing it is love. Our team is a team that feels it is a recipient of a love that we don’t deserve so we go about our work in the globe trying to share it with as many people as we possibly can.”
“I have also been keen in the last year to start changing some of the paradigms that have existed in a sector called charity. I think its really interesting that we can confront people with the things they’ve assumed they’ve understood about the work called charity. In the past our approach was guilt and sadness. The idea was if we expose you to these sad stories we may tug at your heartstrings and get you to come alongside and partner with us. I could require this of you tonight and I could even try it but I think it is far better to inspire you to do something instead.”
“So when we used to talk about thirty day famines, we are now talking about how in North America we can take this thing we sit around and celebrate all the time food, that we take for granted and how we take the celebration of that and use it as an expression of love outward to people who don’t have the same abundance. Again, I just want to express my gratitude for each of you for being here tonight for hearing us out for trying something new. I am hopeful that we will inspire a movement that we call #hungerfree and through the month of October as we celebrate beautiful holiday traditions like thanksgiving. I am hoping we’ll take a moment during these celebrations and see where we can help elsewhere.”
“It is my sincere pleasure to introduce Paul Newhman who has been a global partner on this particular theme for us on this particular area. He is an expert on the area of food and food security.”
Paul Newnham Global Youth Director, World Vision took the podium to share and expanded on some of the initiatives of World Vision.
“It’s so exciting thanks so much Lara, to be here in Canada and see all you guys here filling this room with the beautiful effort that has been put into the table placements and the gathering and the emotion and energy in this room.”
“As the global director for Hunger free I get to travel around the world and eat with people, some would say that’s a dream job. I have to run alot umhh yah.. (laughter).”
“I also get to see people engaged and discuss food. Our work around the world is anchored in a vision that we believe we can actually create a hunger free world. We actually produce enough food in the world to feed people. We know how to grow more food, we know how to grow more nutritious food. In some ways when I first started at World Vision it was this that was something that wasn’t possible because there wasn’t enough food in our world but now there is enough food it just doesn’t get to the right places.”
“Our passion and vision for food and for seeing a world when everyone gets to enjoy food, enjoy their favourite food and get enough of it. This informs the way we work. At World Vision we have partnered for a long time with organizations like world food program. We have done our bit in emergencies, in situations providing food. We have over the last year fed eight million people through these programs with the help of people from countries like Canada but we’ve started to shift in that food in not just a problem today its something we need to think about how do we use food to stimulate long term change. This is something we have been doing a lot of thinking about and partnering with people.”
“Over the last six decades our approaches have changed and evolved and we are starting to see new ways to go beyond just handing out food to places where I was in South Sudan and I saw we were providing food that was providing long term change within eighteen months within providing food and secure people were going from having their own business their own in this case a fish farm and they were actually harvesting fish and and they were growing fish and being able to sell it and take care of themselves. It just blew my mind that within eighteen months that kind of stuff can happen. So we are looking at how we can take this to scale and move it forward. As Lara said hunger free is a shift and it is a shift in thinking and how we do that.”
“So at the heart of this idea we feel that food is something that should be celebrated we believe that food is something that is good and it is enjoyable and it should be available to everyone we also believe that community can make a difference that when we gather together around problems, ideas visions we can actually bring about all kinds of creativity to bring about change. We also believe in sustainability. We want that to be sustainable we actually want that to be an investment to actually mark a long term difference .”
“Nothing beats good food and good people and having a Meaningful Meal gives you the opportunity to do both.” World Vision
Next up speaking on their passion for food and change was Dennis Le Prescott who has been traveling extensively with World Vision sharing stories, cooking with people and being part of the change.
“Dennis The Prescott is a food writer, recipe developer, and photographer whose recipes and photos are regularly featured in Food & Wine magazine. But that description hardly does justice to the food and photographs he creates. He is also passionate about ending poverty and hunger – and sponsors a child in Mali through World Vision Canada. He recently joined his passions for cooking, social justice and community by hosting his own unique HungerFree Double-Up Dinner, a seafood boil with some friends on a beach. His video captures the heart of how good food can bring people of all ages together to celebrate a meal and enjoy each other’s company.” https://www.hungerfree.org/lobster/
Food Bloggers, influencers and media specialists were invited to dine, connect and share the meal and the movement.
Floral Design : Hello Midge
