2 minute read
MADE WITH LOVE
Chef Ben Kramer and the Made With Love Team
In March 2020, at the beginning of the first COVID-19 lockdown, Chef Ben Kramer reached out to Winnipeg restaurants who were facing a quick lockdown for an unspecified length of time with refrigerators full of food and offered them a way to help: donate food that you cannot use or give to your staff and his team would make sure it got to Winnipeggers who needed to eat.
Expecting to put in a few days of organizing food as a stopgap to prevent food wastage and support the community, Ben received an overwhelming response from Winnipeg kitchens: they rescued and used over $150,000 worth of food. When the reality that the pandemic was going to be long term set in, Ben turned to longtime community partners, Community Food Centres of Canada (CFCC) and NorWest Community Centre, to see how he and his team could help reduce food insecurity in Winnipeg.
The CFCC’s Made With Love program started in Toronto with a focus on providing single-serving, vacuum-sealed, nutrient-dense meals to people who are in need but might not have regular access to a full kitchen. With the prospect of bringing the program to Winnipeg, Ben suspected he could raise enough money to support the program for a couple of months. Then Winnipeggers stepped up. The program has been ongoing for 18 months, completely funded by the public.
“Winnipeg has a big food insecurity problem and a really deep need,” explains Ben. “Because Winnipeg is a smaller community, we can really see its effects. When people were locked down, sitting at home, many of them realized they were in a privileged position where they could cook for themselves.” Throughout COVID-19, the program has not only safely provided nutritious, accessible meals with dignity to people who were in quarantine or who could not access everyday meal services due to safety concerns, it also kept restaurant workers employed and supported local suppliers and farmers. As we return to a semblance of normal, however, the community’s food insecurity problem does not go away.
“A lot of aid that rolled out over the last 18 months is wrapping up, but the need is still there in Winnipeg, so we are going to try and keep Made With Love alive alongside the business. Hunger is a problem, but ultimately it’s a poverty issue. We are doing triage and putting the Bandaid on while organizations like CFCC are doing the policy work to fight poverty and change the bigger picture.”
• $300,000 raised so far
• Over 85,000 meals delivered since April 2020
• Distributed by local organizations, including Main Street Project, NorWest Co-op, North Point Douglas Women’s Resource Centre, West Broadway Women’s Resource Centre.
