Welfare Food Challenge: Meal Plan

Adapted from: Rusty Clark - On the Air M-F 8am-noon

The Welfare Food Challenge starts today. If you haven't heard of it before, the Challenge exists to highlight the inadequacy of welfare rates in BC. A single person receives only $610 a month, a rate that's been frozen for over 9 years. After you pay for the bare minimums to survive, you've got about $18 per week for food left over. (more info on the math here) Raise the Rates, with others, is working to increase awareness of the extreme poverty of people on welfare; & how this poverty costs the people of BC in human suffering & billions of wasted dollars every year.

The campaign inspired me to see what eating on $18 per person per week actually means. I sat down with an actual pen & paper, pulling up the calculator & Save On Foods app on my phone. I planned out the cheapest set of 21 meals I could think of. Here's what I came up with:

• breakfast: on sale cereal with milk or oatmeal
• lunch: peanut butter sandwiches with half an apple for lunch every day
• dinner #1: boxed macaroni & cheese with wieners & frozen peas
• dinner #2: beans, rice, & salsa with cheddar
• dinner #3: green beans, potatoes, chicken thighs
• dinner #4: tofu stir fry on rice
• dinner #5: hot dogs with baby carrots
• dinner #6: vegetarian chili with cheese
• dinner #7: tuna rice casserole with peas & cheddar

This limited menu comes to $72, assuming I could get many of the things on sale or at dollar stores. It includes two to three servings of fruit & vegetables per day--much less than is healthy. It also assumes that we already have condiments & pantry basics like cooking oil, salt, spices, sauces. There are no snacks & no desserts. There's only enough milk for 285ml per person per day--cereal & a bit for cooking or maybe a small drink for the kids. It's also counting on a bit of savings from buying a few things in bulk for the four of us--a single person likely couldn't have even this variety of food.

I'm fairly sure it's impossible to get enough fibre, protein, or fresh fruit & vegetables on this little money. & even if you are extremely resourceful with free community meals, picking up the occasional day olds that some restaurants toss out & go to the food bank, you would still be hard pressed to eat healthily.

I can't imagine eating this way, day in & day out. There's no room for going out for treats, there's no room for birthday cake or having a friend over for dinner. There's no room for variety. The stress of shopping for food & making ends meet with this tiny budget would be soul crushing over the long term. 

While I spent an hour or so puzzling this out, I don't plan to actually eat this way this week. Most of us are recovering from bad colds & I honestly don't want to subject my small children to such poor nutrition for the week. It breaks my heart that so many children & adults in this province have to live on so little. 

Please help me send a message to our government that this needs to change. Go sign the petition to raise welfare rates & write a letter to your MLA to ask for action on the issues that impact poverty: get rid of the arduous barriers to receiving income assistance, increase the minimum wage, provide more publicly funded childcare, increase low-income housing stock, & raise the welfare rates. A sample letter is provided at this link. 

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Community Engagement for New Parents: Baby Talks

When you have a baby, it seems like you don't have time to do anything except care for that little person. Taking them out can seem daunting & it seems so awkward to bring them to the kind of places & events you used to go. Even with my first child, I tried to go out & do things, but it was often really stressful because there were no change tables or people were looking at me funny for arriving with an infant strapped to my chest. I started to fall into the role of spectator--I felt like I was watching the world go by but not really able to jump in & do that much.

My attitude is that babies are people & members of the community too--why should they & their parents have to be shut up at home for years? I believe that babies & children should be out & about, learning right from the beginning how to fit into the world. I think the idea that babies & small children are somehow an inconvenience to everyone else (if you don't know what I'm talking about, try taking the bus with a stroller or bringing a toddler to a restaurant & just wait for the haters to pop out of the woodwork) & they should stay out of the public until they have table manners is ridiculous. Not only for the children themselves, but for the poor parents. I don't think I'm alone in trying to avoid paying for babysitting--we just can't afford to go out if it means paying someone $50 to take care of our kids.

So when I heard about Baby Talks, I was thrilled. I used to spend hours talking politics & since I was in my early teens I've volunteered in my community. The desire to do these things didn't stop when I reproduced. If anything, it made me want to do even more to try to improve the world my children live in. Baby Talks is a chance for parents & caregivers of babies to talk about the issues affecting our city. Getting together in baby groups to talk about nutrition, sleep or childhood development isn't unusual, but what is unique about these sessions is that the topics are focused on the civic issues that impact our families. Each session includes a short presentation by an expert speaker or panel, followed by small group discussions. Those attending should come prepared to share their thoughts & ideas with fellow participants. There is no child-minding or childcare, you just participate while caring for your baby.

The upcoming Baby Talks session tackles affordable housing. Here's the info:

Can cities create affordable family housing? Your babies may not know much about housing, but their caregivers do. Join us for Baby Talks, a unique free policy talk aimed at people caring for young children.

The topic of this session is housing and Think City asks the question: Is it possible to create affordable housing for middle and lower-income earners in Vancouver and other cities?

Think City Baby Talks is a chance for people caring for babies to talk about the issues affecting our city. Parents and caregiver should be prepared to participate by sharing their thoughts and ideas while caring for their pre-walking babies.

Event Information and Registration

Speakers: City of Vancouver assistant director of housing policy Abigail Bond & former University of British Columbia associate vice president campus & community planning Nancy Knight
Where: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at SFU Woodwards, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
When: Friday, November 15, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Registration: Free, but reserve online at thinkcity.ca/register or call 604-312-5307

Think City Baby Talks looks at the big issues for people caring for little people. Presented by the Think City Society in partnership with SFU's VanCity Office of Community Engagement & Public Policy Program.

I'm looking forward to this event. What about you? Will I see you there?

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Happy Pride: Celebrating Equality & Human Rights

Photo: YVRBCbro, via Flickr. Creative Commons license

If you live in & around Vancouver, as I know many of my readers do, you can't have missed the fact that it's Pride Weekend. From crosswalks to window displays, rainbows are everywhere in this city. Tomorrow's the big parade, where the population of our city more than doubles with the spectators & participants.

Pride in Vancouver has become our Mardi Gras. It's now pretty mainstream, the parade full of politicians of all stripes & city officials. I've heard it criticized as being too commercialized or 'watered down' somehow, but really, isn't that great? It's a big celebration of LGBTQ people & culture, a far cry from its beginnings as a risky political move to come together publicly to declare, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!".

This weekend, let's raise a glass to our American friends who saw DOMA repealed not long ago. Let's celebrate with all the same-sex couples married here in BC who are toasting ten years of legal marriage.


But. Before you call me a Pollyanna, I'm not saying we're done yet. As we remember how far we've come since Stonewall, let's not forget the LGBTQ people who are still struggling for basic human rights in the rest of the world. Or facing execution for being homosexual in countries like Sudan, Iran, Yemen. Let's keep up the discussion about the Olympics in Sochi & how best to fight the repression in Russia. Let's remember that for the majority of our neighbours to the south, marriage equality is still a dream. Let's keep in mind the horrifying suicide statistics of queer youth in North America & the gay bashings that are still happening.

& when I say let's, I mean ALL of us. This isn't just an LGBTQ issue. Marriage equality (including all the same rules around children & partner benefits) & the right to simply be out & open about our sexuality or gender without fearing bullying, physical violence, or even death at the hands of your own government--these are HUMAN RIGHTS.

So go give your LGBTQ neighbour/sister/cousin/grandpa/coworker a hug or a smile. Slap a rainbow sticker on something. Speak up when you hear someone saying something anti-gay. Add a few books to your kids collection that include same-sex parents. See you at the parade?

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GO VOTE!

To my BC readers: GO VOTE! You've got less than four hours (less than three if you're in the eastern bit of the province on Mountain Time) before the polls close!

Remember, if you don't vote, you can't complain a bit about the results of the election. Even if you think there's no point, if your chosen candidate hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of being elected, it's still worth it. Frances Bula offers some reasons why in her article in today's Globe & Mail: In the safest of seats, B.C. constituents weigh the value of their vote.

Photo Credit: Dean Terry via Compfight cc

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What I've been reading lately

It's been a while since I've put out a link-stuffed list of things I've found interesting on the interwebz. This time, I decided to just throw my last ten bookmarked pages at you, with a little explanation about what makes them worthy of a read.

This is the under 8 size swimwear on www.elizabethhurley.com

1. Do you have a young daughter? What do you think of Liz Hurley's new line of bikinis for girls? Huffington Post has a video.
2. Another HuffPo piece on why the third trimester is actually kind of awesome, just for all you preggos out there, or those who want to reminisce.
3. I'd never thought of making snack food like these cinnamon almonds in a crock pot. Might just have to try this soon.
4. My friend Leigh penned a brilliant article for Jacobin Magazine about the real reason why the space program has fizzled.
5. Have you seen any news articles on the recent study on sleep training methods & their impact on babies? Annie of PhD in Parenting takes a closer look at the actual methodology of the study & discovers what the study actually proved.
6. I found an online service that helps manage your Twitter account, specifically to filter by who's not following you back. Unless it's a Twitterati like Margaret Atwood who can't possibly keep up with all her followers, or a service like Translink Information, I think it's poor etiquette not to follow back & perfectly reasonable to unfollow those who don't reciprocate.
7. The results (en francais, for those of you who can read it) of an interesting study in France looking for the sociological reasons behind the huge variation in breastfeeding levels among French women.
8. I love nearly every Tyee piece I read, I have to admit, but this one is stellar. 'The Parable of the Textbook', by Henry Yu, an exerpt from the first chapter of "Too Asian?": Race, Privilege and Post-Secondary Education. This new collection of essays is a response to "Too Asian?", an article published in Maclean's magazine nearly two years ago on race in Canadian universities.
9. Yet another study that adds to the mountain of evidence that there is safety in numbers for cyclists, this time in Philadelphia. Check out the article here.
10. Not only to we need more bikes on the road, we need more on our walls. Bike art! Get some here. 

Could you possibly head over to Circle of Moms & vote for The Sprog in the Top 25 Canadian Blogs? Just click on the badge over there → 

You can vote daily, by the way. ;) 

Happy Labour Day, folks!

Graphic nabbed from the Facebook page of The Other 98%

My orange day

While eating breakfast, I started to notice all the orange things in my life & decided to do a little photo essay of the day.

Vitamin C.

Breakfast.

Getting dressed (again, as shirt #1 got covered in breakfast).

Dental hygiene.

This moose is delicious.

Time to go vote!

Our polling station, at David Livingstone Elementary.

K & A arrive at the Grandview-Woodlands baby group.

It's not Linus, it's Schroeder.

Healthy orange lunch.

At the Vancouver-Kingsway NDP Zone House, getting our outside scrutineer packages.

Yams & peas for dinner.

At Heritage Hall for the victory party.

People were drinking orange.

Sprouty also got thirsty.

Had one for the road.