30 September 2010, Thursday

Living on $20 a week for food—to rewrite a relatively new proverb—isn’t for sissies. You just might be able to squeak by on $20 a week if you’re strong of mind (planning my food purchases took hours and hours this week) and strong of body (shopping took me five only occasionally painful hours on foot this week), if you’ve got an extended social support network, if there are no surprises (sickness, an accident), and if you never need anything else.

This week, I’ve literally walked (and walked and walked) in the shoes of someone on social assistance. No. That’s not quite true. I’ve walked in the shoes of someone on social assistance in only one aspect of that person’s life—his or her relation to $20 a week for food. But that’s not quite true either. I’ve merely followed in the footsteps of someone on social assistance as he or she shops for $20 worth of food. Even in this exercise this week, I’ve been advantaged in my own well-constructed walking shoes.

For me, this week’s exercise in excessive walking and limited eating has also been an exercise in the art of seeing. Hunger is largely invisible in our community. But I’ve learned to see clues all around me. The tipped grocery carts abandoned on street corners. The women with bundle-buggies, men without helmets on bicycles. The mothers on sidewalks pushing infants in strollers, trailing toddlers. People waiting for busses. People shopping the food aisles of dollar and discount stores. People laden with shopping bags on the streets. Are they all hungry? Probably not. But too many of them are.

In Nightlife, published as an insert in today’s Record, the restaurant reviewer concludes: Dinner for two a very reasonable $150.

If one evening’s dinner for two people at $150 is considered very reasonable by a large percentage of us living in Waterloo Region, surely $20 a week for food for a person living on social assistance is very unreasonable.

It’s also unacceptable.

Those living on social assistance in our community are among the most creative and adaptable and resilient among us when it comes to eating. We’ve given them handles without hammer heads and told them to pound in nails. They’re also among the bravest. Week after week, they try and try to pound.

Can you imagine what such creative, adaptable, resilient, brave people would be able to do to improve their own lives and our lives in community together with $25 extra dollars for food a week, $100 extra dollars a month?

Please join us in asking the Ontario Government to implement a Healthy Food Supplement of $100 a month for every adult receiving social assistance in Ontario—a mere two-thirds of that very reasonable dinner for two.