With our third meeting last week, the TYFPC is pushing forward with discussions about how we can best engage with the upcoming municipal election. (Check out the summaries from our January meeting and February meeting in earlier blog posts.)
On Thursday, March 20th, we met to explore the opportunities we have with the upcoming election and potential partners for this project.
We discussed the fact that we are well connected to many food organizations, but are still not sure what youth organizations might be doing. We also talked about the need to find out what’s happening in other municipalities to see if there are opportunities for collaboration. We will be doing some research into each of these areas before our next meeting.
Moving forward, we would like to think long-term for our approach to this project: It’s not just about the election, it’s also about making a plan and holding those elected accountable.
We also talked about interpreting our survey results and digging deeper into what our top-scoring issues (food access, funding to community food organizations, and urban agriculture) really mean to youth and how we can frame these issues effectively in the upcoming election. We will be exploring these issues in more depth at our next community meeting.
As well, Jessica and Kaylen, from the TYFPC, attended the first meeting that the TFPC has hosted about organizing around the election. Interestingly, the group had very similar ideas to our discussion group about what to focus on for a collaborative food platform. For instance, we talked about not only targeting candidates, but also aiming to increase civic engagement. We also agreed that we should be thinking long-term and preparing materials for post-election. The TYFPC hopes to play a critical role in this collaborative effort and it is likely that the project that comes out of the TYFPC discussion meetings will align nicely with the work organized by the TFPC.
If you would like to get involved with this project, you are welcome to join us at our next meeting on April 3rd at 5:30pm in the map room at Hart House, at the University of Toronto St. George campus. Please RSVP on Facebook or by emailing Kaylen, Advocacy Committee Co-Lead, at kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Kaylen.