Meal Exchange

🧡A Note From Meal Exchange’s Founder, Rahul Raj

In reflecting on the past 30 years, I want to share a few lessons that may be useful for you:

1. Starting is everything. At 17, I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I had more food than I could eat, and others didn’t have enough. I wasn’t alone. So I started. I asked others to join in, and they did.

2. Persistence pays. My university had little desire to allow students to donate their meal plan money because it ate into the profit margin. While I tried to negotiate a solution with them, they weren’t having it. So we were persistent, and opted to do it anyway. That same philosophy was leveraged by many students we’ve collaborated with over the years who navigated the challenges of their campus food system to create change.

3. Be humble. While I had little idea what I was doing organizationally, I had faith I would figure it out. I wish I had taken a similar, humble approach to understanding the root causes of food insecurity earlier in my journey.

4. Faster alone, but further together. While the initial idea may have been mine, the impact was ours. If I were to start Meal Exchange again, I would form a team (including advisors) much sooner, welcome their input and insight, and leverage their talents to go further.

5. Diversify funding. We were heavily dependent on grants from foundations and the government, most of which focused on short-term impact, but we should have nurtured relationships with alumni to develop a diverse individual giving strategy that enabled us to build for the long-term.

I’m grateful to have collaborated with so many friends, volunteers, board members, and staff to mobilize and celebrate the tremendous power of students addressing food insecurity in Canada. I’m also grateful for the team’s awareness, support, and confidence to sunset the org when our contributions and thesis were no longer as meaningful or impactful.

It is with admiration and gratitude that we share this final post from Meal Exchange.

Thank you for the past and ongoing support!

👀 Take a look at the updated Meal Exchange website for more resources, toolkits and opportunities.

📔Don’t forget to explore Meal Exchange’s history and memory book for inspiration, appreciation and good giggles!

For any questions about the resources on the website, you can contact the Trinity Food Systems Lab at the University of Toronto at [email protected] or via the website.

📚Happy learning!

Our final newsletter was sent out! Here is an overview in case you missed it:

💻Take a stroll through the updated Meal Exchange website with new resources, toolkits and research to support all your campus initiatives. More details to be shared this week!

📑 Curious to learn more about the impact of student food insecurity on mental health? Fairuz Karim conducted research to better understand the intersection between the two, as well as the implications and best practices to improve campuses to support student well-being. Full report and infographic on the website.

🗓Opportunities:
1 - Research Study: Understanding how student food activism has succeeded around Canada. Email Professor Marie-Josée from UOttawa at [email protected]
2 - Student-Run Food Initiative Summit (November 15, 2022) - Check the eventbrite page for more info.
3 - Cross Canada Cook-Alongs: Follow to learn more!
4 - Workshop Series on Community-Based Food Programming : Check the eventbrite page to see upcoming events.

Thanks again for all your support during this time!

🎉BIG thank you to all of you who shared your stories with us over the last few weeks! It has been such joy going down memory lane & celebrating some of Meal Exchange’s accomplishments together. If there something you still wanted to share, please fill out the form in the bio or email us and we will find a place for it.

✨Next week, we will provide more updates on what you can expect as we wrap up in the next two weeks. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to reach out to Jaimie or Rohini at [email protected]/[email protected]

Happy weekend everyone!

Since the Summer of 2018, Meal Exchange has become a fixture in my circle of food security connections. Events and emails have been a familiar place for me to connect with friends, activists, educators and ideas I shared with my communities in Halifax, Toronto and beyond! A memorable person throughout this journey has been Jaimie White, a fellow Nutrition student from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). We bonded over seeing nutrition as a route to a career beyond dietetics rather than an avenue into food security advocacy. The potential to mobilize youth in the food systems and community became an endearing part of our many encounters, including our home grounds in York Region. Many students at events and colleagues in Meal Exchange have become collaborators and friends outside the organization.

The importance of having youth-focused and led organizations like Meal Exchange is more than just representation. It's about giving youth the opportunity, resources and space to make representation turn into action! The best part of many events was the funding support - my most memorable trips were in 2019 with the Student Summit in Hamilton and BIPOC Storytelling workshop in Guelph. As a part of the organizing team, I could inform programming and gain insight into planning youth engagement that I carry with myself today. Shoutouts to Hansel, Shadyia, Mehdia, Joy, Merryn, and Marissa. Many more folks have been introduced to me, and me to them thanks to Meal Exchange’s national network!

Advocacy should live on beyond graduation and an organization closing down. Mobilizing leaders to take action and sustain the movement comes with passion, desire and instilled tools waiting to be passed on to the future of food security leaders!

Thank you for being such a huge part of our impact over the last few years, Gurneet!

💪The Summit played such an important role in connecting us and creating a space for dialogue to tackle challenges together. While the National Student Food Summit will not take place, we encourage you to keep these conversations going!

🙋 If you need support on how to initiate conversations on your campus, don’t hesitate to ask!

Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with Meal Exchange. If you wish to do the same, kindly fill out the form in the bio or email Jaimie or Rohini at [email protected]/[email protected]

Our next MX story is from past student leader and national staff Merryn Maynard (2015-2019).

“ I still remember my first Summit in 2015, showing up and being in a room full of amazing students. Michael Waglay, an MX staffer at the time, stood at the front of the room and asked us to raise our hand if we’d ever worried about affording food or struggled to access food we could afford as students. Many people raised their hands. Michael said, “you’ve all experienced student food insecurity and that’s completely unacceptable.” This was such a rallying moment for me and others in the room to know that food insecurity among students might be common, but isn’t okay. This “aha” moment motivated me as I continued this work, knowing that student food insecurity should not be an inevitable part of accessing higher education.”

✨Big thanks to Merryn for her years of hard work researching and addressing student food insecurity in Canada and for this reminder that student food insecurity is not a reality that people should just accept.

🙏Thank you to all of the students and partners who have worked so hard over the years with us to elevate the dialogue around student food insecurity, and we look forward to seeing others step into this work.

If you’d like to share your MX story, please e-mail us or fill out the form in the bio!

Stay tuned! The Meal Exchange team is working on updating the website with resources that we hope could help as you continue all your work and projects on your campus!

Our aim is to have this ready by the end of August. If you have any questions or suggestions, we would love to hear it! Please e-mail Jaimie or Rohini 😊

THROWBACK! To 2009 when MX started Stomach This! The workshop series brought together students to learn about food security and how to take action in their communities. Hosting convening events for students continued to be an important part of Meal Exchange's work and were the sites of many passionate, powerful conversations that led to youth creating important change. Stay tuned later this month for the release of our updated library of resources which will include many educational workshops and event planning ideas.

✨”good connects people and strengthens bonds in the worst of times”✨

These words resonate with all of us. Actions rooted in goodness will create strengthening ripple effects. And TOGETHER these effects are even more powerful. 🌊 We need this kind of spirit to keep the good food movement going!

🤗Thank you for sharing your positive experiences and learnings from your time at Meal Exchange. We want to hear from others as well!

Don’t hesitate to message Jaimie or Rohini, or fill out the form in the bio!