Growing Good Food Ideas Spotlight: The Karma Project of Penetanguishine
Posted: June 24, 2013
Categories: News from Sustain Ontario
The Karma Project of Penetanguishine from Sustain Ontario on Vimeo.
Powerline Films has been traveling across Ontario gathering stories of people and places that are transforming the future of food. Created in partnership with Sustain Ontario and more than a dozen partners, these videos shine light on good food ideas from many regions of our province.
At the beginning of each week, we put one of the videos in the spotlight so you can feast your eyes on the good food ideas developing across the province. This week’s video comes from the Town of Penetanguishine. Watch the rest of the videos on ontariofoodvideos.ca.
“There is a lot of potential that already exists in our community, people that produce food or that want to produce food or used to produce food… A lot of the knowledge exists, we just need to bring in the threads and weave it all back together.”
The compassionate pay-it-forward mentality of the Karma Project has opened up new opportunities for people in the Penetanguishine community to take part in re-building a healthy local food system. The community garden initiative is one of a variety of good food projects in this southern Georgian Bay municipality, which has made itself a model for other towns seeking ‘off-the-beaten-path ideas’ to prevent knowledge loss and to tackle barriers to food access for low-income residents. Beneficial results of the project are both immediate and long term: the plots provide in-kind charitable donations to a women’s shelter in neighbouring Midland; and those same gardens promote lifelong food literacy and provide skill-building opportunities for youth. Watch this video to learn more about the growth of farmers’ markets in the area, including the first year of a farmers’ market on Christian Island, a remote community with 700 residents and no grocery store.