Description:
Building community through local food, Loving Spoonful is a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to creating a resilient and equitable food system in Kingston. This vision is brought to life by their programs, which include community kitchens, pay-what-you-can farmers markets, gleaning, and agricultural skills training.
Mission:
Through relational work and horizontal knowledge sharing, Loving Spoonful works to create a community of food sovereignty that:
Focuses on food for people
Builds knowledge and skills
Works with nature
Values food providers
Localizes food systems
Puts control locally
Treats food as sacred rather than commodified
Community Building:
Emphasizing the importance of personal transformation and cultural work in making positive social change, Loving Spoonful recognizes the need for inclusive processes that foster belonging, and seeks to create spaces for community through healthy, local food. In other words, they believe that the social & ecological change the world needs starts on an individual level, with equitable access to local, healthy food and a sense of community.
“We're an organization that works on community building, and building connections between people using food as a vehicle for transformative change.”
Relationality & Teamwork:
“Volunteers are community members and participants, so we're always trying to share more knowledge, share more skills, and not have it be that same hierarchical structure as you often see in voluntary organizations.”
Run by dedicated volunteers and hardworking staff, Loving Spoonful operates through a lens of relationality, and a method of horizontal knowledge sharing. Interactions within their programs happen on a peer-to-peer level rather than in a hierarchical, authoritative manner, revolving around understanding while honouring the connections that sustain all life.
In terms of cultural work, Loving Spoonful aims to operationalize food sovereignty by sharing and applying a worldview in which life is a circle of relatives, and food is treated as a sacred gift from the Earth. This relational worldview creates space for the sharing of knowledge and skills through programs such as the Community Training Farm, which offers free guidance and experience for people pursuing a career in the local agriculture industry.
Local Food Access:
With locations all over Kingston that meet people where they’re at, Community Harvest Markets have been one of Loving Spoonful's local food access initiatives, offering staple produce like carrots, onion, lettuce, and potatoes, along with culturally significant foods for newcomers. These initiatives follow an anti-oppressive framework, guided by the values of self-sovereignty, biodiversity, and working with rather than against natural ecosystem processes (organic and regenerative farming).
“If anyone wants to do food sovereignty work in Kingston, [Loving Spoonful] are the people to partner with.”
Links:
Website: https://www.lovingspoonful.org/
Contact: 613-507-8848
Address: Kingston Community Health Centres 263 Weller Avenue
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