Community fridges, pantries in Scarborough aim to decrease food insecurity
Sitra Suleiman hopes her Community Food Hub initiative continues to grow
Sitra Suleiman noticed a need in her community, and wanted to do something about it.
The Scarborough resident recently launched Community Food Hub, which aims to decrease food insecurity and avoidable food waste by setting up outdoor community fridges and pantries across the city.
"It's a 'Take what you need, leave what you can' model," Suleiman explains.
Suleiman said she has always been passionate about helping others and being involved in her community. After seeing a rise in food insecurity, she said it was important to her to help address it.
"This is accessible 24/7 for anyone in the community to use," she said.
A customized shed painted by a local artist houses a fridge on one side and a pantry on the other. Inside the doors are donation guidelines and a place to write suggestions for items to drop off.
There are currently two locations, one at the Malvern Resource Centre and the other at Progress Church, which just opened last month. Her food pantry is one example of action through the Power of Us Campaign launched with the 2023 Toronto's Vital Signs report that shows that neighborhood activities, community civic action and volunteerism are down.
"We can tell based on when we stock the fridge and pantry that in the next day or two the items are gone, so that shows us there is a need," she said.
WATCH | Scarborough woman takes action after seeing food insecurity in her community:
Suleiman said it was also important to help people access culturally appropriate food in a dignified way.
"There's no registration, you don't need to talk to us in order to use it, you can just go at anytime."
The initiative relies on volunteers to help maintain the fridges as well as community donations, and her hope is the project continues to grow.
Community Food Hub supported by local non-profit
East Scarborough Storefront, a resource centre, helped bring Community Food Hub to life. Laura Hammond, the organization's grassroots leadership strategies manager says as soon as Suleiman pitched the concept to them, they started doing outreach for her.
"People like Sitra are very capable of bringing solutions to their community, and what we do really well at Storefront is help to leverage opportunities for residents by enhancing the solutions they're bringing," Hammond said.
"By amplifying her voice on what she wanted to do, we got the community behind her and also supported her with resources."
The organization is passionate about helping people bring solutions to their own community.
It also houses many other grassroots initiatives — including providing people in the area with homemade hot meals through a pick up window and delivery.
"It's important because of the dignified way to access the food," said Krystyne Gunnis, community projects specialist at East Scarborough Storefront.
"There is a lot of stigma around accessing food banks and food support, and here we try our best to remove those stigmas. Our meals are being prepared by your neighbour, with familiar ingredients," she explained.
East Scarborough Storefront is reaching out to the community for more donations. The organization says it's doubled the number of days they prepare and hand out meals since last year, and they're still forced to turn people away.
"We see the need and it's not sustainable for just grassroots to be doing this work," Gunnis said.
Suleiman hopes to see more support to help her initiative spread further too.
"To see it physically built and open to the public is exciting," she said.
"I want to see more fridges, more opportunities for partnerships and food drives, and also empower people to have this in their local community as well."
For more information on our Sounds of the Season holiday campaign in support of GTA food banks and to learn more about our Friday, December 8 programming day at the CBC Toronto Broadcast Centre, visit cbc.ca/sots.