A "Binning" Guide? What The Hell?!
The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, Van City, The Vancouver Foundation and Simon Fraser University have funded a pamphlet produced by The Grandview-Woodlands Food Connection Coalition to give "tips" to homeless, immigrant and low/no-income Vancouverites as to how they might best feed themselves. By searching through garbage cans.
!*#!*&#*?
Is this for real? Dumpster Diving as a way to access food considered "healthy and nutritious"? This is Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, this is a developed country, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the 2010 Olympics and we are distributing leaflets suggesting the best way to Bin for Breakfast? I don't care that the money for the Olympics doesn't come from the same source as Human Resources or Health Care or Education, people being forced to eat waste is an outrage. The argument that people are not "forced" into the binning lifestyle is as much garbage as the stuff being removed from dumpsters. Nobody, as a little kid, when asked what s(he) wants to do when s(he) grows up, replies "I want to be a Dumpster Diver, just like 'Crazy Larry', the guy in our lane that everyone hates/fears/ignores/berates." This just isn't right. If the food at the Salvation Army, Evelyn Saller Centre and the other organizations that feed the hungry is that bad, if the Food Bank is that unable to help the hungry, then something has to change. There are dozens of organizations in the Downtown Eastside dedicated to helping feed hungry people, can some of them not receive real funding, real dollars to produce real food that will get people out of dumpsters at mealtimes? It may cost a little, it may cost a small fortune, but the lives of our most vulnerable citizens have value. If they don't, we are beyond redemption as a city, as a society.
Will the Vancouver Mayor during the 2010 Games make sure dignitaries get a copy of Better Bins and Dumpsters in their welcome packages?
!*#!*&#*?
Is this for real? Dumpster Diving as a way to access food considered "healthy and nutritious"? This is Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, this is a developed country, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the 2010 Olympics and we are distributing leaflets suggesting the best way to Bin for Breakfast? I don't care that the money for the Olympics doesn't come from the same source as Human Resources or Health Care or Education, people being forced to eat waste is an outrage. The argument that people are not "forced" into the binning lifestyle is as much garbage as the stuff being removed from dumpsters. Nobody, as a little kid, when asked what s(he) wants to do when s(he) grows up, replies "I want to be a Dumpster Diver, just like 'Crazy Larry', the guy in our lane that everyone hates/fears/ignores/berates." This just isn't right. If the food at the Salvation Army, Evelyn Saller Centre and the other organizations that feed the hungry is that bad, if the Food Bank is that unable to help the hungry, then something has to change. There are dozens of organizations in the Downtown Eastside dedicated to helping feed hungry people, can some of them not receive real funding, real dollars to produce real food that will get people out of dumpsters at mealtimes? It may cost a little, it may cost a small fortune, but the lives of our most vulnerable citizens have value. If they don't, we are beyond redemption as a city, as a society.
Will the Vancouver Mayor during the 2010 Games make sure dignitaries get a copy of Better Bins and Dumpsters in their welcome packages?
posted by Alphamutt at 8:00 PM
2 Comments:
i agree with you, this is ridiculous! their attitude is probably something like "oh well they're going to do it anyway so we should help them in some way..."
sheez!
john w
Unfortunately no-one seems to want their tax dollars allocated to these services. As it is now, the Evelyn Saller centre charges $2.00 per meal which may not sound like much but since pan handling is illegal and it is next to impossible for anyone, much less a single drug addict, to qualify for welfare $2.00 is a small fortune.
I agree with you that there needs to be more money to feed and house the homeless but my MLA and MP don't find my demands alone enough to instigate change.
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