Food Programs

Food is a vehicle for change. At Access Alliance, it serves as one of the tools we use to advance our vision where Toronto’s diverse communities achieve health with dignity. Food has the power to unite, educate, empower, transform, prevent and manage disease – and of course, the power to nourish!

Our robust services and programs are a testament to our enduring commitment to the central role food plays in the client and community-centred work we offer. Broadly, food programs can be categorized into two important frameworks:

1. Food Insecurity Programs – initiatives that target financial security and, in the interim, services that support emergency food relief efforts for clients who do not have enough money to buy food (a circumstance termed “food insecure”) and,
2. Food Literacy Programs – initiatives that target skill building to influence dietary habits. These programs primarily aim to increase nutrition knowledge, cooking skills, and confidence to make decisions about food and health in order to change health habits. External factors such as food systems, the environment, and the social determinants of health and how they shape the use of these skills, are also considered in the teaching and learning of the skills.

In all of our work, Access Alliance commits to Healthy Eating Guidelines for programs, services and in-house meetings.