August 2015
COMMUNITY NEWS
RenfrewCollingwoodCommunityNews.com
Food brings youth together to share stories and create connections by Kaitlyn Fung
In Renfrew-Collingwood, where there is food, there are stories, and some of the most remarkable stories can be heard from the youth who work here. Some of them have paddled through the waterways of B.C. alongside dozens of canoes as part of the RenfrewCollingwood Aboriginal Youth Canoe Club (CREW), connecting and sharing meals with the First Nations communities that host them. Others have dedicated countless hours to volunteering with groups such as Still Moon Arts Society, cleaning up areas like Renfrew Ravine so that salmon may keep on returning to spawn in Still Creek after an absence of several decades. It was also high school youth who partnered with Fresh Roots Urban Farm Society to create Canada’s first modern schoolyard farm at Vancouver Technical Secondary School. Similarly, students in the Organic Garden Committee at Windermere Secondary School continue to put years of work into their schoolyard vegetable garden and greenhouse, also one of the first projects of its kind in the city. These are the kinds of stories that make RenfrewCollingwood such a uniquely vibrant site of community action, much of it championed by youth brought together by a passion for food. While it’s not everyday that these stories get heard, some of the youth involved in these initiatives had the chance to change that. In collaboration with the Renfrew-Collingwood Food Security Institute, a group of youth recently travelled to the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, near Prince George, B.C. It was here that they got to tell their stories at the 17th annual B.C. Food Systems Network Gathering, a provincial conference dedicated to Renfrew-Collingwood youth share their stories, including their struggles and successes, of doing food-related work in the community at the 17th annual BC Food Systems Network Gathering in Prince George, B.C. Photos by Jason Hsieh
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