Pilton Community Health Project is to launch a new report, Hungry for Change, tomorrow at the Old Kirk and Muirhouse Church on Pennywell Gardens. The report explores how community groups in north Edinburgh have responded to food insecurity in the area.
Hungry for Change identifies actions to alleviate food insecurity for everyone. At this launch event Pilton Community Health Project will challenge everyone to tell us what they can do towards alleviating food insecurity in north Edinburgh. Representatives of all levels of government have been invited to respond at the event. We hope this will be the beginning of new and fruitful opportunities to work together to tackle some of the issues which are raised in the report.
Martin Johnstone, who chaired the Scottish Government’s Independent Food Poverty Working Group, will share his perspective at the launch event. He said: “Hungry for Change identifies the causes of food insecurity – these are fundamentally about people not having enough money to get by on. It also highlights many of the consequences, including damaging levels of poor mental and physical health.
“At the same time, it demonstrates what local communities can and are doing to come together around food. What’s happening is tough stuff – and it is clearly hard work – but it also inspirational. To tackle the scandal of food poverty we need to be challenging both the scandal that people do not have enough money to feed themselves and their families and, at the same time, discover creative ways where sharing of food brings communities together. Pilton Community Health Project and the people that it is working alongside are showing that this is possible.”
Bill Gray, lead officer at Community Food and Health (Scotland) in NHS Health Scotland who lent their expertise to this report, said: “Access to adequate food is a human rights issue. One of the ways to reduce health inequalities and improve health is to integrate the principles of human rights into food policy and decision making.
“This includes ensuring that communities are at the heart of decisions that affect them. We know that when power is shared like this, people feel much more in control of their lives, and their health and wellbeing improves. This report demonstrates clearly the value of empowering communities and we look forward to working with others to progress the actions suggested, to improve health and reduce health inequalities in Scotland.”
The report will be available on Pilton Community Health Project’s website on the morning of the launch: http://www.pchp.org.uk/resources/hungry-change-community-led-responses-food-insecurity-north-edinburgh
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