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Poverty diet to be an eye-opener for Anglicans, community leaders…
Aug 31, 2010
By Henrieta Paukov
A woman flees an abusive situation and is left with nothing, not even a can opener. A disabled couple cannot work, have trouble getting around, and can barely afford to pay their bills. A boy comes to school hungry, because his father cannot afford to give him breakfast.
These are the people Ted Glover, a member of the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy Committee and a parishioner at St. George Memorial in Oshawa, will have in mind in October, when he lives for three days on food that would typically be handed out in a food bank hamper. They are all people he has met through his extensive volunteer work with social service organizations and his job as a teacher. The three-day diet is part of the Do the Math Challenge, a campaign that will see Anglicans, along with community leaders and other concerned citizens, calling on the government to bring about an immediate increase of $100 a month in social assistance rates, and in the longer term, revise social assistance rates based on actual local living costs.
“The amounts that people get through Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program are simply very inadequate,” says Mr. Glover, who learned a lot about the subject when he helped with a social audit on poverty conducted by the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition this spring. “They are unbelievably low. These people are really suffering. Many live in deplorable conditions. We knew what to expect, but it was even worse than we thought.”
The Do the Math Challenge will launch with a press conference at Queens Park in Toronto on Oct. 4. Premier Dalton McGuinty and other politicians will be asked to take part in the poverty diet. “We don’t see this as a one-shot event,” says Murray MacAdam, the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy Consultant, who is helping to organize the campaign along with The Stop Community Food Centre. “We expect that people who have taken part in the Do the Math Challenge will speak about it in their parishes and that there will be follow-up meetings with local MPPs and politicians. We will really be trying to make our case in the fall as the government starts working on the budget for the next year.”
Archbishop Colin Johnson, area bishops, and Evangelical Lutheran bishop Michael Pryse will also participate in the poverty diet. In a letter inviting Anglicans to join him, Archbishop Johnson points out that 380,000 people in Ontario must rely on food banks each month. Often, the only diet these Canadians can afford is monotonous and unhealthy, according to Mr. MacAdam. “I think the people who participate in the Do the Math Challenge poverty diet will find they have less energy,” he says. “It’s filler food: it fills you up but doesn’t give you the nutrients and protein you need.”
In his letter, Archbishop Johnson says that while he is not looking forward to subsisting on a plain, barebones diet for three days, at least he has a choice. “That is not the case for thousands of people across Ontario,” he continues. “Throughout his life and witness, Jesus Christ made abundantly clear his sense of compassion and caring for those on the margins of society. We need to follow his example today, and the Do the Math Challenge is one way that we can be, however briefly, in the situation of people who are truly on the margins of our affluent society.”
For his part, Mr. Glover expects that eating a poverty diet for three days will be “a real eye-opener. I’m planning to be disciplined about it. I think it’s going to be a challenge, and I think it’s going to make me more sensitive and aware of people who live like this on a day-to-day basis.”
If you would like to get involved with the Do the Math Challenge Poverty Diet, contact Murray MacAdam, the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy Consultant, at mmacadam@toronto.anglican.ca or 416-363-6021 ext. 240, or view the information posted on the Social Justice and Advocacy web page, here.
E-mail Murray here.
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