Mazon Canada Will Fund Nearly $1.3 Million In School Food Infrastructure

(cliquez ici pour la version en français // click here for the French version)

Mazon Canada is excited to share that we are an initial recipient of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) School Food Infrastructure Fund. Through the AAFC’s investment, we will be able to provide infrastructure and equipment grants to school food programs, deepen our collaboration with school communities, increase access to nutritious food for students, and strengthen community food security across the country.  

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Mazon Canada is a grassroots community foundation that mobilizes our Jewish community to act on food security issues, and supports people of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and abilities in accessing the healthy, nutritious food they need to thrive through grants to food aid-projects nationwide. At Mazon Canada, we’ve witnessed the devastating and escalating toll of food insecurity – including on the more than 2 million children in Canada now affected by food insecurity every year.  

The Importance of School Food Infrastructure 

Children need nutritious, accessible, and well-integrated school food programming in order to learn, survive, and thrive. Fortunately, across Canada, a network of teachers, parents, volunteers, and community members are hard at work doing everything they can to keep students fed. 

Unfortunately, school food programs are too often under-resourced and under-funded, with too many students across Canada falling through the cracks. 

Imagine the frustration of preparing 300 lunches each day with a broken-handled knife, or wasting fresh vegetables because your fridge turned itself off in the night... again. Imagine a local farming non-profit offering to provide fresh lunch options for students, allowing students better to access better nutrition and connect with their environment – but they can't afford suitable food transportation within budget. 

The School Food Infrastructure Fund (SFIF) is an affirmation of how critical infrastructure is to a well-functioning school food program. The infrastructure and equipment grants distributed by Mazon Canada, funded by the SFIF program, will help community-based not-for-profit organizations facing problems like these expand and improve school food across the country. 

How Mazon Canada Joined the Movement 

In 1989, the federal government resolved to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. With Mazon Canada’s now Advocacy Chair Laurel Rothman serving its National Coordinator, Campaign 2000 was soon formed as a pan-Canadian movement to hold the government accountable to this commitment.  

While organizations like Campaign 2000 worked to move the needle in Ottawa, Mazon Canada was focused on direct aid – getting meals in bellies at school food programs across Canada. But, despite our increased funding to this cause, the scale of the problem continued to grow much faster than our ability to address it. When the 2000 deadline came and went, we bore witness to Canada’s failure to end child poverty. As rates of child hunger continued to rise in the years that followed, it became clear that Mazon’s role needed to grow beyond direct aid – systemic change was needed to deliver food security for Canadian children.  

Five years ago, Mazon Canada began pursuing systemic solutions by forging a partnership with the Coalition for Healthy School Food, the largest school food network in Canada and the leading advocate for ensuring every school-aged child across the country has a healthy meal or snack at school every day. Through our partnership, Mazon Canada has funded the Coalition’s critical research on the importance of universal school lunch programs, as well as their campaigns to put this research in the hands of policy makers and decision makers.  

Last year, the Coalition led the charge in advocating for a National School Food Program – a campaign that Mazon Canada was proud to support both as a member of the Coalition, as well as by leading our Jewish community in petitioning the government in support of a robust National School Food Program (links here, here and here).  

Investing in the Future 

In 2024, the federal government announced a historic investment of $1 billion dollars over 5 years for the creation of a National School Food Program. While this investment falls far short of establishing a universal program across the country, it brought us joy to know that many more children across the country would be able to eat nutritious food every single day – 400,000 more children, according to the government’s own estimations. 

On September 6, 2024, the Government of Canada officially launched the School Food Infrastructure Fund (SFIF), a project to build up the infrastructure in community-based not-for-profit organizations with school food programming in support of the burgeoning National School Food Program.  

Mazon Canada is honoured to be an Initial Recipient of this funding. In our role as a community foundation, we will facilitate the distribution of close to $1.3 million in infrastructure and equipment grants to grassroots organizations that are providing much-needed food to students across Canada. 

In recent years, Mazon Canada has made improving the transparency, fairness, and accessibility of our grantmaking processes a top priority.  Our experiences with school food programs, funding community food security, and infrastructure grants have readied us to meet this moment effectively. And Mazon Canada’s community – mostly small- and medium-dollar donors from across Canadian Jewry – have supported this work every step of the way. 

We look forward to implementing the School Food Infrastructure Fund alongside a set of incredible organizations: the full list includes us, the Breakfast Club of Canada, Farm to Cafeteria Canada, Food Banks Canada, Food Depot Alimentaire, Food First NL, Saskatchewan School Boards Association, Second Harvest, United Way BC and United Way East Ontario. 

For those of you who run school food programs in school communities, please sign up here to be notified when our application process for school food infrastructure opens. We look forward to being in touch later this year! 

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Funding for this project has been provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada through the School Food Infrastructure Fund (SFIF).