Ghana Girl

Bussels Airport

From 12,000 meters in the sky I write en-route from Brussels to Accra, Ghana. Last night we passed over Greenland and I saw the northern lights for the first time ever. I think staring at the shimmering green lights I had a moment of realization, it had finally sunk in that I was moving to Africa for a year. It wasn’t when I had the 7 vaccines, or the 6-week wait on my visa or even trying to fit my life into one backpack. This was really the point of no return, and my whole world was about to change.

After my last contract I decided that I wanted to do something a little different, I wanted a challenge, something to shake me up and something outside of my comfort zone.  I am young, single, and able bodied and now with a degree I literally have all the privileges and opportunities in the world. I wanted to offer what I am and what I have to the rest of the world and I wanted to do it as a volunteer while I could still afford to.  Using my experience in agriculture and business I will be working with women farmers in a rural area to improve their processing and distribution while increasing their individual and community food security.

For some reason I always had a quiet dream to live and work in Africa one day. I usually shrugged it aside as a childish pipe dream, never really thinking it would happen but secretly always wishing for it. I don’t know what it was that attracted me to Africa other than the total unknown. It never really occurred to me that my degree in environmental studies would take me where I had always wanted to go.

Women's March-Ottawa

To tie everything in together was the motivation I gained from the recent women’s marches on Washington and around the world. This highlighted for me the need for us women to work with and for each other. It is only through improving women’s lives around the world that we will gain equality. After the march I attended in Ottawa there were presentations and speeches, one in particular by the managing director of Crossroads International (coincidentally or not the organization sending me to Ghana) stood out to me. She spoke about the work they were doing across the developing world to further women’s rights and empowering women and how many places still had a lot of work to do to rise to the level of our western ideals. Tears streaming down my face it was as if I was in the right place at the right time to hear her message, and I was going to do the work that was needed, the work that was driving the women’s rights movement.

In Flight Ice Cream!

Lunch is being served now, the plastic cutlery and disposability of air travel reminds me how many emissions I am producing by my journey, but the lifestyle I will be leading will be very different from the wasteful North Americans I think. Time to travel to a place where the 100-mile diet is less of a new age fad and more of a way of life. Where you shop at farmers markets for everything not just luxuries and where a slower pace of life will quiet my mind and allow me to take it all in.

Much love,

Melanie 

"To travel is to live"- Hans Christian Anderson

If you would like to support my work or learn more see my funding page here: https://cci.akaraisin.com/pledge/Participant/Home.aspx?seid=2478&mid=9&pid=3045663

Why You Should STOP Catering Your Events

With the holidays behind us it is time to reflect on the absurdities of excess we experienced over the holiday season. The biggest one of all being all that leftover food that gets thrown out from parties and events when there is just sooo much leftover.

Food Waste in Canada

I'm sure you've heard by now that food waste is a major issue, with up to 40% of all food that is produced being wasted. A lot of waste that we see, especially in an institution, is from catered events and conferences. Catering has systemic issues of processing. The age old custom of ensuring you have enough food to feed everyone has turned into an industry practice. Kitchens will now prepare 10-20%  more food than was ordered to ensure they're is enough if everyone on the guest list shows up and in case there are extra people. Combine this with the often tendency of the organizer to order enough food for how many people you invited instead of realistically how many will pull through in the end. This can be as much as 20-30% higher than the actual attendance of the event. This means you can be left with up to 50% extra food being made than needed...time a million events is a lot of food! What happens to that food? Well if it is served food that is left out, it has to be thrown in the garbage!!!! Because it is no longer food safe or allowed to be donated.

Food Rescued from the garbage

Ok I'll admit that the portion of waste associated with conference and events is less than consumers waste at home (47% of food was is from the consumer). But it's still a big enough number that we should do something about it.

So what can you do?

• Order less, order 20% less than you think you will need to ensure no food is left over 
• Consider lighter fair, smaller amounts of food that can be more easily eaten 
• Ask for half, the kitchen can hold back a portion of the food, food that is prepared but not served can still be donated or reused in the kitchen. 
• Bring containers, or ask for take out containers so guests can take leftovers home. Otherwise, they will be thrown out.
•  Don't order! Have drinks instead or try potluck style for less formal events. 

Or maybe you could be like me and run around trying to salvage leftovers before caterers return to dispose of them ;) Yum!

Enjoy,

Melanie XX

"Waste not, Want not" -Proverb

Guest Blog: Meal Exchange

You can find my guest blog at: MealExchange.com

 
I was born and raised in Ontario in Ottawa and Toronto where concrete jungles were my playgrounds and food came from packages at the grocery store and we hung out at the mall on the weekend. I loved shopping at the farmers market, biking to work and thrift shopping, but these things were money savers and I never considered my greater impact on the world I inhabited. When I was planning on returning to school I knew I was interested in the environment but I never realized that in a few years my entire life would be changed by studying it. I chose UNBC for its small class sizes, geographic location AWAY from home and because it had a Farmers Market that I thought would be fun to be involved with.

I began volunteering with the University Farmers Market and applied for a position as the Development Assistant. I didn't get the job but soon took on the role of Volunteer Coordinator that I was able to apply as an internship towards my degree. In my second year I was voted in as chair of the Market Committee. Now I am the Market Manager, in charge of the market that inspired my interest in food studies. Working at the farmers market provided me with connections to other things happening in the food system and allowed me to understand the bigger picture issues like food insecurity & food justice. 

I started eating local, ethical foods and thinking about my consumer behaviours. I spent an entire year eating only from the farmers market just to test my resolve and solidify my feelings towards food. This wet my appetite for other works surrounding food on campus. I became involved with the PIRG on campus and was hired as the Local Foods Coordinator organizing a monthly good food box  and sourcing local coffee and eggs. I started gardening at home and soon became the PIRG gardener on campus and started a market stand in the garden over the summer to sell fresh produce to the UNBC community.

I was hired as a coordinator with the Campus Food Strategy Project through Meal Exchange in 2014. I now had a network of food activists at my disposal and it was great to connect to something larger than our little campus. This has launched me into a research project on food insecurity that I am just sinking my teeth into. We were also able to start a food recovery program on campus rescuing food from the cafeteria and donating it to meal programs in the community. Since we began we have saved over 2000 lbs. of food and are looking at other strategies to build a campus food bank and expand the program to other campus's across Canada.


Who would have thought this city slicker from Toronto would morph into the die hard foodie she is today. Nearing the end of my degree I begin to worry about who will take my place here on campus. Having taken on so many roles I worry I will not be able to find interested students to continue the work that I have stewarded during my time at UNBC. But I know whoever takes over will have a wealth of information to take on from mine and my predecessors experiences and from the connections of our national network of dedicated students with Meal Exchange.

In good food,

Melanie XX

"Without food, we cannot survive, and that is why issues that affect the food industry are so important. " - Marcus Samuelsson