October 13, 2011

Get ready to tuck in to one of the dates on the calendar that means quite a bit to us here at Strombo Tonight. October 16th is World Food Day, the annual UN initiative to spread awareness about food security issues. The theme of this year's World Food Day is "Food Prices - From Crisis to Stability", which focuses on the rapid swings in food costs that heavily affect the poorest people in the world.

Here's a quick roundup of World Food Day events taking place across the country:

Oxfam Canada is asking Canadians to take their World Food Challenge. It's one of the simpler - and most delicious! - of challenges; basically you invite a few friends over to share a meal you've prepared with local, organic and/or fair trade ingredients.

If cooking's not your thing, maybe visit Oxfam Canada's site and click on the "Upcoming Events" tab to find out about their World Food Day picnics, lectures and conferences going on all over the country, from Halifax to Saskatoon, from St. John's to Montreal, from Queen's University in Kingston to UBC in Vancouver.

Food Banks Canada is encouraging Canadians to recognize World Food Day by visiting their site to learn about hunger inside our country, and by giving, if you can: texting HUNGER to 30333 makes a $5 donation to Food Banks Canada. And that's not all! Three branches of Food Banks Canada are taking part in the annual "Great Canadian Food Fight"; Regina seeks to hold on to last year's title by collecting more food than challenger Food Banks in Halifax and Victoria over a 48-hour period this weekend.

If you're looking for other local events, look no further: In Newfoundland and Labrador, you can pick up gardening tips, see documentaries about young farmers, take a food preserving workshop, donate to the food bank or hit up a garden harvest party. In Toronto, there are lectures and discussion salons and other events this week at Ryerson University and Hart House at U of T. And in Winnipeg, the Foodgrains Bank is hosting an event where three Winnipeggers will discuss how they took the welfare budget challenge and ate on $4 a day.

And just in time for World Food Week, the World Food Programme has a new online campaign that partners the fight against hunger worldwide with the desire to help a child achieve their personal dreams. The new site features to-camera interviews with children from several different countries who speak about their goals for the future, their favourite soccer teams, and their favourite foods.

Here's one of the videos, featuring Abdi, from Ethiopia, who wants to be a doctor.

If the mood strikes, consider visiting the World Food Programme's site to learn a little about how you can get involved with helping the hungry.