I'm just going to take you through some of our success stories regarding our programming.
This past summer we did a program that we named “Lettuce Turnip the Beets”, a pun on words. We brought community members out to our community gardens along with some local musicians from the community, and we had live music. There were children who would come and harvest whatever vegetables were ready or maybe weed the garden. Elders came out and showed their support in the garden. This was a huge success. We saw approximately 30 to 40 members of the community come out each week for approximately seven weeks and really engage and take part in the community.
We also do our drop-in meals, as Chad has said. We do them twice a week, and this is where we bring in a chef, and volunteers from the community will come and learn food skills as well as create more sense of community and serve these meals to community members. Last night we served a meal, and there were approximately 40 individuals who came and shared with us.
We're reintroducing traditional protein into the community. There was a little bit of hesitation with community members wanting game or cooking it. We're unsure of why this is. The University of Ottawa did a food security study that said that community members were only eating 1.5 tablespoons of traditional food a day, meaning traditionally harvested food. Many community members aren't keen to use moose and fish, but we use it consistently in our programming to really bring back those traditional values, and it's working. More community members are coming to our centre and asking for traditional game and traditional fish and different ways of cooking these meals.
Thank you.