Chew on This!
Again this year, social work students from Professor Janice Parsons’ class joined the national "Chew on This!" campaign to draw attention to the shocking rate of poverty and food insecurity in Canada.
Over 860,000 people in Canada visit the food bank each month, according to Food Banks Canada, and one in eight families struggle daily to put food on the table. Two out of every five Northern households are food insecure, and tax filer data from 2017 suggests that about six million people in Canada live in poverty.
Chew on This!, the largest anti-poverty campaign in Canada, is held each year on Oct. 17, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. People across the country engage their communities about poverty in Canada and the need for the federal government to implement a comprehensive, human rights-based and fully-funded anti-poverty plan.
Professor Parsons’ students set up in the science, arts and engineering buildings and handed out Chew on This! campaign lunch bags containing a snack, a magnet and a postcard to send to the federal government demanding stronger national action on poverty, food insecurity and homelessness.
This year, regardless of the result of the election, Chew on This! is asking that our federal government show their commitment to a poverty-free Canada within their first 90 days of office by enacting effective policies based in human rights and making poverty a budget priority. Learn more at Dignity for All.