The West End Food Cooperative (WEFC) is aiming to raise awareness around food and in turn rouse interest and money for its proposed grocery store.
Slated for a 2011 opening in Toronto's west end, the store would be one of the few multi-stakeholder co-ops, meaning that ownership, through community bonds, would be equally shared amongst consumers, employees and producer/supplier members."We want to share (with the public) the knowledge behind the reason we are doing what we are doing," said Melissa Benner, the community engagement coordinator with the WEFC.To that end, the WEFC is holding a film night at Roncesvalles Revue Cinema on Wednesday, Dec. 9, where it will screen the film Food, Inc., by filmmaker Robert Kenner."Basically (the film) is an expose of the food system and the business of food," Benner said. "It does a lot of the tracing of the lines of where our food comes from and who owns the food system."The film focuses on health and ownership, farmers markets and organic food."It is a very thought-provoking film," Benner said. "It ends with a bunch of suggestions on what people can do and we think our co-op is a good followup to that."The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. and admission is $10."The Revue Cinema supports us and they are letting us keep the proceeds from admission, which we are putting toward the co-op store."There will be an opportunity to talk to WEFC directors before the film showing. The screening begins at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a discussion about the community bonds with co-op founder John Richmond.The co-op is selling these bonds to help raise the money to open the grocery store. The campaign launched on Nov. 2 and according to Benner, it has been extremely successful so far. About $20,000 has been raised since the launch.In addition, the WEFC has plans to be out in the communities of Parkdale and Roncesvalles throughout December caroling as well as mixing in songs that have been revised to suit the mission of the co-op.For more information about these events and others planned for 2010, visit www.westendfood.coop or email melissa@westendfood.coop