Resilience and Food Security

This week’s presenters were Gene Miller who spoke on climate change, Jennifer Girard who spoke about community geared towards sustainability, and Cindy Moyer who develops arts and environmental awareness in Colwood. Gene miller spoke about the cost of late stage capitalism and how it has affected our resilience, the other two speakers talked about local food security in Colwood. Community resilience is pretty much determined by local food security. Jennifer talked about programs that she has put together in the community of Colwood that involve local food security. The programs that she talked about were gardening universe project, gardens in motion, fruit tree project, and food guide. The gardening universe project is for people that want to grow food in their backyard, get seeds, plants and a mentor to help them map out there backyard and get a start. It encourages people to grow their own food and if they need help there are people that will come and teach them how to properly grow their own food. The gardens in motion is exactly what it sounds like, it is a flat bed trailer with plant boxes and beds on it and it tours around communities and shows people how to get more in touch with the cycles of life. The fruit tree project was a new concept to me and a great idea, it involves volunteers going to people’s houses that have fruit trees in their years and picking the fruit for the owners and then also being able to take some fruit themselves which is then donated to the food bank. The food guide project is pretty normal in more communities; it is pretty much a farmers market where local farmers sell their locally grown food. Cindy Moyer works for the town of Colwood and is trying to make a change for local food security, she develops arts and environmental awareness in the Colwood community. She is currently part of the mayor’s task force; they are currently working on a plan to produce green maps which point out the recreational parks and green spaces in the Colwood area. She also talked about how important local food is and ways to promote such as the tomato challenge that took place last year between the mayor of Colwood and the president of Royal Roads University. At this event both the mayor and president were given locally grown tomatoes and had to come up with their best dish. This in turn helped promote the idea of growing local food and keeping it in the community. I will sign off with this; I would beat the mayor or the president of RRU any day with my amazing cooking skills.