The Local Community Food Centre

The Local Community Food Centre in Stratford, Ontario, empowers those with barriers to accessing and benefiting from good healthy food by offering opportunities to cook, grow, share, and advocate for good food for everyone in our community. We approach the problems of poverty and food insecurity as justice issues rather than acts of charity, knowing that access to good food is central to health and should be treated as a basic right. Our programs empower people to advocate for themselves and assist them in building kitchen and gardening skills that help alleviate their food insecurity in a dignified and non-stigmatizing way. While our emphasis is on empowering our low-income neighbours, we welcome the whole community to access our services and programs to promote connectedness and enhance belonging as we work together to build a stronger, more resilient community for us all.

We believe that everyone can benefit from learning how to cook healthy food from scratch even on a tight budget. We believe that community gardening, low-cost markets, and community meals can help increase access to good food while also promoting health and social connectedness. While we continue to develop innovative program approaches to addressing food insecurity, we also seek to empower those whose right to food has been violated by giving voice to challenge the conditions, policies, and structures that maintain this inequity.