What's Missing Is You
Now that you know to look for them, you will start to see them; ‘Missing’ posters are popping up throughout the neighbourhood. In this community, this would not be considered uncommon let alone newsworthy. What is different this time is that the posters serve as a reminder that people in your neighbourhood are going without food.
One in seven Canadians are food insecure meaning they have missed a meal or gone a day or days without eating due to a lack of money.
When you think of food insecurity on a national scale, the magnitude of the problem doesn’t always resonate. For perspective, potentially one in seven of the people that you come into contact with today are not eating regularly or healthy because they don’t have enough money.
Look around and ask yourself, “Who among us is not eating?” Then ask how you can help; www.MissingMeals.org offers a solution.
Food insecurity isn’t something that we can blame on the pandemic. COVID-19 is only making the situation worse. Pre-pandemic, there were almost 5 million Canadians who were food insecure. That is the equivalent of everyone in the G.T.A. missing meals today and every day because money is tight.
Alarmingly, 48 percent of Canadians are $200 or less away from bankruptcy. They are $200 away from losing their home and turning to family, friends or the street to survive. Once you are homeless, it is difficult to get off the street. There are people in Toronto who are chronically homeless; they have been without a permanent place to live for years and even decades.
Homelessness is not a choice. No one wishes to live along the DVP, or under an overpass. No one wishes to be exposed to mother nature or the abuse, theft and violence that comes with homelessness. On average, someone who is homeless is robbed and beaten at least once a year.
No one wishes to ignore their hunger pangs because their wallet is just as empty as their stomach. But today, tonight and tomorrow, thousands of Torontonians will be missing meals.
What’s missing is you. If one in seven people in your neighbourhood are food insecure, and fortunately you are not one of them, that means you are one of the six that can be part of a solution. How you can help is through www.MissingMeals.org. The question is, why won’t you help? Or does that change starting now?
