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To see these resources like these
developed by our garden coordinators and explore more CLICK HERE
Solidarity Gardens are gardens that have been cultivated as part of the Grow A Row campaign - a collaboration between Corbeille de Pain, West Island Mission, and West Island Community Shares. These gardens were planted from seeds and seedlings given out by these three participating organizations at the beginning of the season. Produce harvested from these gardens was distributed to people through food banks in the West Island or through our Solidarity Market. The total weight of the produce collected (from all gardens) to be announced soon.
West Island Mission also had summer hires (through Canada Summer Jobs program) dedicated to building and maintaining a number of Solidarity Gardens -- they sometimes worked in tandem with our garden coordinators, Sophie and Tharrshi.
The Solidarity Gardens we maintained included one on Gouin Boulevard made up of 12 raised beds, thanks to the Pierrefonds-Roxboro Borough. We also supported several seniors who volunteered to host Solidarity Gardens on their own properties, which was also a nice way to help break social isolation during these times of social distancing. For more info on this initiative, view a news report on the topic from CityNews.
The Garden Coordinators sent out weekly emails that included gardening tips and information about the weekly workshops that they were coordinating. They designed their programming to respond to the needs of participants -- gentle Yoga was even on the menu.
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
Crédit: VertCité
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The Solidarity Market À-Ma-Baie is located at the Gerry Roberston Cultural Centre, thanks to the support of the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro and VertCité (a project of Éco-Quartier). The Solidarity Market is based on the principle that all prices are suggested (based on the fair value paid to the farmers), and clients have the option to "Pay-What-They-Can". Our weekly sales have increased by more than 30% from last year, partly as a result of accepting the Carte Proximité, an initiative of Carrefour Alimentaire Centre-Sud.
This season, Market Coordinator, Tia Bergeron, did a wonderful job sourcing a good variety of produce from local organic and ecological farms. Our kitchen animators were hard at work all season long preparing meals and desserts to sell alongside our produce. Allison Cockhill, our summer kitchen animator, was instrumental in both the kitchen and at the market.
The markets have run smoothly with all necessary adjustments to accommodate social distancing and other health and safety rules and regulations needed due to COVID-19. Thank you very much to Diane Latendresse who volunteered all season to help communicate the guidelines to our clientele and who coordinated our weekly raffle.
Please note our two new market dates: October 1 and October 15.
Out of over 40 kitchen demonstrations produced by Nadia since March, these four were the most popular
Curried Lentil,
Potato, Spinach soup
Chicken Meatloaf
Muffins
Potato Gnocchi
No-Knead Pizza Dough
Find all of these recipes and more on our website's RECIPE PAGE.
Follow us on Facebook to see our kitchen demonstrations shared on Fridays.
Although they have been incredibly resourceful and productive, cooking and transforming, in the kitchens over the summer, our kitchen animators are really looking forward to getting back to running the community kitchens and kitchen workshops that Corbeille de Pain is known for. We are doing our best to get them back to doing what they were hired to do. This involves clarifying health and safety rules for the kitchens, adapting group sizes, physical audits of the capacity of the kitchens, reconnecting with host kitchens, and then connecting and reaching out to new hosts and new clients. Questionnaires will be going out shortly to existing clientele to get their feedback about coming back to the kitchens. We continue to watch how the pandemic is unfolding and are committed to remaining adaptable in our services.