Tonight we’re at Birchfield Community School hosting a workshop with interesting people from across the area discussing Food Insecurity – and what we should do about it at a city level.
Kate Cooper (Chair of Birmingham Food Council and New Optimists) is opening the event with a brief presentation – the slides are below.
There is quite a mix of people here – by design, to encourage different points of views, and the collecting intelligence of the group will lead to some good conversations and ideas around emergency food aid.
This workshop is part of a 6 month process it started 3 months ago and tonight will be 3 hours long. All table discussions are recorded and transcribed anonymously so nothing in missed – and then we analyse them, both content analysis and a forensic linguistics analysis. The recordings aren’t released publicly but the analysis is – and it is looked at as a whole with all the other workshops – and we produce a report.
Tonight we’re looking at the issue of Food Poverty – and food security as a Human Right – based on the UN statement:
“All people and all times have physically and social access to sufficient safe nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preference for an active and healthy life”
– UN FAO World Food Summit 1996, 2012
So the premise is – Food Security is universally applicable and emergency food aid strips people of their human right – if it’s not readily available and it is something we are given – not sourced our agency and choice are taken away.