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By Dimitrije  Martinovic
Dimitrije is staff with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE

“Food insecurity is the inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints.”
https://proof.utoronto.ca/food-insecurity/

In Toronto's Regent Park, a community made up of residents living in Toronto Community Housing (TCH) buildings, and another community of renters or owners who are paying market value for their apartments or condominiums;  the matter of food insecurity does affect everyone in he same way. If for example, you are paying the market value for your dwelling, most likely you are not facing food insecurity; however, if you are low income and living in social housing you may at times feel a measure of insecurity regarding access to food.

With the arrival of the UN World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, the neighbourhood is taking centre stage in promoting a global platform for sustainable urban development; the result of the apparent success of the first three phases of revitalization, that are now being modelled around the world as to how mixed use and mixed income development can can create new housing opportunities in neighbourhoods where previously there were fewer opportunities for development.

The World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park (Pavilion) - Powered by Daniels is a collaboration between the Urban Economy Forum and UN-Habitat, with the support of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and The Daniels Corporation. The Pavilion will create a springboard for collaboration and collective action to advance crucial conversations covering a wide range of topics relating to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), explore topics relating to urban economics and finance, and public participation through different lenses, as well as open dialogues about urbanization globally. It will be a knowledge exchange hub for academic discourses, achievements, research, best practices, projects, ideas, and initiatives about urbanism to realize the goal of sustainable urban development, and in particular SDG 11 – making cities safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable.
https://www.worldurbanpavilion.org/

Regent Park residents are extremely motivated to find solutions to the many issues they face. Food-insecurity has been a key concern for Regent Parkers during the pandemic, and to that end when other more institutional forms of assistance were found lacking, the community-led initiatives kicked in.

As Regent Park residents begin to collaborate with World Urban Pavilion to share their experiences and to take advantage of the knowledge that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) project has to offer, community members met at the UN Pavilion to share their experiences with representatives from the UN Pavilion.

The meeting was facilitated by Waleid Khogali Ali, Co-Chair – Community Building Working Group, Regent Park Social DEVelopment Plan (SDP). He was joined by some of the key community-led organizations who played a critical role in supporting Regent Park residents during the pandemic to access food properly. These collaborations included Healing As One, who provided as many 300 meals a day at the beginning of the lockdowns,  while Food Share and Care TO contributed a total 10,512 meals  and 500 boxes of good food to the community, and $72,000.00 was invested in the Regent Park community through funding from Regent Park Social Development Plan (SDP) to assist small businesses during the same period.

The resilience of the Regent Park community in the face of adversity is remarkable and in no small way dependent on the communal spirit that pervades the community and goes beyond the various support structures that are in place from the City of Toronto, the provincial government, and the federal government, and has to do with the spirit of a community that has had to rely on the efforts of its own members to see it through hard times.