Mutual Aid & Food Insecurity
Mutual aid
Community Fridges HamOnt is a mutual aid group. This means that we’re not a charity, non-profit, or run by a board. Everyone involved is a volunteer and shares in creating, maintaining, and using the fridges.
Our group began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but mutual aid initiatives like ours are built on decades of existing work and tradition, often by largely marginalized communities.
In Hamilton, ON, we are on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. This land is covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe to share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
We recognize both the value of this covenant in informing our approach to sharing food within our community, and also the relationship of food insecurity to the history and reality of colonial violence.
What is food insecurity?
Fewer people than you might expect have reliable and consistent access to food. Food insecurity can be experienced on a spectrum from mild, to moderate or intermittent, to severe. Financial hardship is the most common contributor, and belonging to a group that experiences systemic racism or discrimination presents a higher likelihood of food insecurity.
Food sovereignty is the goal. We believe in a world where everyone has access to the food of their choosing – suited to their preferences, nutrient-rich, and culturally appropriate.
Community fridges are not the solution to food insecurity, but a tool we can use to share what we have and look after one another.
