including the excluded in food security actions

October 4, 2009

my latest task is to figure out how to include “the excluded” in food security actions. namely, ethnic and racial minorities in a Canadian context.

within this overarching query, the quotation marks represent two underlying issues of utmost concern (and others that i hope to bring to light):

a) those ethnic and racial minorities who are excluded, are faced with multiple social, economic, and political challenges n their day-to-day lives; barriers to food security, as well as overall health and well-being. as such, a large majority of initiatives to improve food security have values and objectives aiming toward inclusivity

b) yet, (and i have to start searching for literature to support for this), there has been little attention paid in the form of outreach to recruit allies with ethnic and racial communities, and where/when it has been attempted, what has been gained (lost?), what was the process, etc?

“a” is fairly well established. “b” encompasses my next task to pursue. as i see it, the doors are open and the food security (mostly white, upper-middle class) are waving in “the excluded”, but few are crossing the threshold.

how then? asking how to involve the excluded in food security actions is to jump the gun and make assumptions that “food”, “security”, and “food security” carry the same meaning for all.

my interest in “how” depends greatly on what i find about “why”.

why then? i have strong hunches that need to be assessed in the existing literature, and examined explicitly in the particular context in which i am working.

if you happen upon this posting and have some good resources or know of doctoral supervisor/funder that would support this work, please post as a comment.


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