The Spirit of Winnipeg Harvest
Winnipeg Harvest lives and breathes its founding concepts embodied in its Mission
Statement, Supporting Beliefs and Code of Ethics.
Those core documents are put into practice every day by respecting the dignity, equality
and humanity of all people.
Everyone who contributes money, food or time to Winnipeg Harvest is helping to fulfill
both parts of the mission statement:
Winnipeg Harvest is a non-profit, community-based organization. Our mission is
to:
1. Share food with hungry families.
2. Facilitate training and learning opportunities for our clients.
3. Focus attention on hunger within our community and move towards longterm solutions
Winnipeg Harvest has set a target of reducing by half the use of food banks by 2020,
with the eventual goal of closing completely.
When people say that ending hunger and poverty is impossible, Winnipeg Harvest cites
medicare as an example of what is possible in Canada.
Less than 50 years ago, Canadians who had a health problem, but not enough money,
could not see a doctor and receive treatment. Many Canadians died prematurely as a
result.
The situation is the same today with food. Canadians without enough income to feed
themselves and their children go hungry. Hunger and poverty are crushing burdens on
the individual who experiences them and on the society that tolerates them.
Hunger and poverty cause malnutrition, all too often limiting the achievement of human
potential and shortening life. A poor man in Winnipeg's inner city will die 10 years
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earlier than his middle-class counterpart.1
Winnipeg Harvest acts as a stop-gap, a band-aid. We have never pretended to be
anything else.
To truly end hunger and poverty requires imagination, commitment and sustained effort
by all sectors of society. Winnipeg Harvest invites all Canadians to end the injustice of
income being a barrier to food, with the same resolve they used to remove income as a
barrier to medical care.
To those who say: "Justice, not charity," we agree in part. We embrace those who seek
true justice. We remind them that charity remains the only humane answer in the interim.
We as a society have adopted the language of human rights because we have failed to
love one another. We need both: Human rights and love.
Winnipeg Harvest has carefully and methodically built its own organization based on the
principles enunciated in this document.
In keeping with Freire, cited below, Winnipeg Harvest is a true engagement between
those who are oppressed – those who live the experience of hunger and poverty – and
those who are truly in solidarity with them.
Evidence of that engagement is found every day on the warehouse floor of Winnipeg
Harvest, where volunteers who are also clients work side-by-side with those who are
not.
Power is decentralized and shared at Winnipeg Harvest, enabling and empowering team
members at every level to have a meaningful decision-making role in the overall
organization. Improvements and new approaches are constantly being made as a result
of this engagement with team members
While the board has responsibility for legal and fiscal issues for the organization, team
members have the responsibility of moving and delivering food to people who need it.
Every function of the organization and every team member who carries out those
1
Manitoba RHA Indicators Atlas 2009, by Fransoo R, Martens P, Burland E, The Need to Know
Team, Prior H, Burchill C, University of Manitoba, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2009,
http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/reference/RHA_summary.pdf
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functions is vital to the success of Winnipeg Harvest.
Winnipeg Harvest respectfully requests all members of the Winnipeg Harvest team –
volunteers, staff and board members – to respect and honour the Spirit of Winnipeg
Harvest.
Winnipeg Harvest has adopted several key documents to guide our journey. The most
important are referenced above: The Mission Statement, Supporting Beliefs and Code of
Ethics. http://winnipegharvest.org/about-us/
Documents produced by Winnipeg Harvest and its partners in the community:
* HungerCount 2014 is published by Food Banks Canada with the cooperation of
Winnipeg Harvest and other food banks across the country. It is available online at:
http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/getmedia/76907192-263c-4022-856173a16c06dd2f/HungerCount_2014_EN_HR.pdf.aspx
* The 2012 Acceptable Living Level (ALL) report reflects the level of income
determined by a panel of Winnipeg Harvest clients as providing an acceptable standard
of living. Produced with the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg.
Winnipeg Harvest uses the ALL report to make the case to the public, the media and
political decision-makers that welfare rates and minimum wage rates are too low to
provide people with an acceptable standard of living.
http://winnipegharvest.org/position-papers-reports/
* Integration and Settlement: The experiences and expectations of African
immigrants and refugees -- Winnipeg Harvest volunteer Reuben Garang and his team
interviewed more than 100 newcomers from Africa to produce recommendations on how
to improve their integration and settlement in Canada.
http://winnipegharvest.org/position-papers-reports/
* The Ombudsman’s Report on the Employment and Income Assistance (welfare)
program resulted from a complaint initiated by Winnipeg Harvest and other members of
the EIA Advocates Network. Winnipeg Harvest supports all 68 recommendations,
including a more transparent and accountable process for setting welfare rates. It is
available online at: http://www.ombudsman.mb.ca/pdf/2010-0526_EIA_Report_2010.pdf
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* Senate brief -- Winnipeg Harvest called for a Guaranteed Annual Income in a brief
to the Senate committee that produced In from the Margins, which recommended the
federal government consider a GAI.
In from the Margins is available online at:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/402/citi/rep/rep02dec09-e.pdf
* The View from Here: Manitobans call for a poverty reduction plan was written by
the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and published by Make Poverty History
Manitoba, a coalition which Winnipeg Harvest actively supports. Winnipeg Harvest
supports the report's call for an immediate increase in Employment and Income
Assistance rates and a comprehensive poverty reduction and elimination plan.
Available online at:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/reports/docs/pov
erty_reduction_plan_fullreport_052809.pdf
Other documents central to Winnipeg Harvest's mission:
* Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
Winnipeg Harvest teaches a workshop based on the work of Brazilian educator Paulo
Freire. Winnipeg Harvest accepts the dichotomy posed by Freire: The oppressed and the
oppressors.
People who wish to help the oppressed cannot tell them what to do. That is merely
another form of oppression. People who wish to work in solidarity with the oppressed
must enter into a respectful dialogue with them based on a commitment to mutual
understanding and respect. Several chapters are available online at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=xfFXFD414ioC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_g
e_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
* UN Millennium Development Goals – http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
* UN Right to Food --- http://www.fao.org/righttofood/
Canada has supported the right to food by signing the International Covenant on
Economic, Cultural and Social Rights. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm
Winnipeg Harvest has asked the federal government to implement the right to food
through domestic legislation.
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