Trick or Eat

University of Manitoba 2015 Trick or Eat initiative collected nearly 900 pounds of non-perishable food for Winnipeg Harvest and raised $155 in donations this Halloween.

Across Canada, over 8,000 youth visited 50,000 homes in support of local food banks and the nearly 900,000 Canadians who have to access their local food bank every month.

Students of the University of Manitoba put on their costumes and went door-to-door on October 31, 2015 to support Winnipeg Harvest. The University is one of the 86 communities across Canada who participated in Trick or Eat this year.

Recognizing that food donations alone will not solve the rising levels of food insecurity within Canada, the students also encouraged Winnipeg residents to begin thinking of long-term solutions to the problem.

Each household was invited to ‘raise their voice’ to hunger by participating in a national online conversation that asked the question: “With hunger in Canada on the rise, what can Canadians do to end it?”

“We believe that talking openly about the problem of hunger in our communities is an important starting point for social change,” says Mercy Oluwafemi,Praxis and UMCAPS Program Assistant. “It is imperative that we change the conversation from hunger as a charitable cause to hunger as a systemic and structural problem. Ending hunger in the long term will require systemic interventions to build more just and sustainable food systems.”