Our church’s social justice focus this year has been on inequalities in the North Country. A key issue faced by many North Country neighbors is food insecurity, a topic pursued in more depth by our food insecurity working group. Last fall our shared offering supported the Bearpacks program in Canton, which provides supplemental foods on weekends and school breaks to children on the free and reduced lunch program.
In May, the Social Action Shared Offering was received for GardenShare, a community nonprofit that has been addressing food issues locally since 1996, seeking to end hunger and strengthen food security in the North Country. GardenShare’s goal is to build a North Country where all of us have enough to eat and enough to share—where we all have food choices that are healthy for us, for our communities, and for the environment.
To that end, GardenShare has a number of programs that help families facing food insecurity to improve their access to healthy food grown by local farmers. GardenShare provides CSA Bonus Bucks, which families use to purchase CSA shares, arranges for SNAP/EBT benefits to be used at farmers markets in St. Lawrence County, and connects farmers and other groups supplying locally grown produce to our food pantries. The biennial Food Day Youth Summit provides an opportunity for North Country youth to engage with issues of food insecurity and related issues. (Visit GardenShare for more information.)
Margaret Harloe