Reflections
on 2023
A Message from Our Chair
On behalf of the Board of Directors of Food First NL, thank you for your continued engagement with our work. On a daily basis, we rely on that engagement to make progress toward our mission of advancing the right to food in Newfoundland and Labrador.
That mission, of course, is a pretty new one. A year ago, Food First NL launched its new mission, vision, and pathways to impact in our last Annual Report. Today, we come back to you having completed our first year of work with that mission and vision knit in and, from the Board’s perspective, it has been a real success.
At each Board meeting, our update from staff is now built around measuring progress on each of our pathways to impact — both progress in our work and progress in the world around us. For an organization like Food First NL that does so much work at the systems level, understanding that environment is so important. From our conversations at the Board, we know that the needle is moving out there, and we’re trying our best to give it a well-timed push. We invite you to look through this report to see what that looks like on the ground. You will see an incredible volume of work pulled together by a growing team that the Board is very proud of.
The Board, of course, is concerned not just about our outward-facing work, but also the structures and processes that allow all of that to happen. Looking back at 2023, we also see a lot of progress here. In particular, as the financial report in this document will show you, our long-term goal of diversifying Food First NL’s funding mix is well underway, with numerous funding partners and earned revenue sources showing up.
Stepping back to the outside world, the Board also recognizes that Food First NL is doing its work in a time of unprecedented challenges to the right to food in this province. The pressures are real, the issues are urgent, and in 2024 we hope to continue working with our many partners to turn that urgency into action.
Carolann Harding
Chair, Board of Directors
A Message from Our CEO
Where do we look for hope when our food systems are in crisis? That question was top of mind for me in 2023.
You certainly didn’t have to look far to find the indicators of crisis. A quick look back at Food First NL’s own blog posts for the year just about covers it. We saw Newfoundland and Labrador moving into position as the most food insecure province in the country — not a #1 anyone ever wants to be.
In 2023, we also saw the shocking rise in food prices continue and how that disproportionately impacted rural and northern communities in our province. We saw the wind-down of the Community Food Helpline, not because the need disappeared, but because it became too great for the service to cope with. It was a heavy year — I saw that weight settle onto the shoulders of our team, our partners, and all the communities we work with.
And yet, we found hope. We found hope in the work Indigenous communities are doing to reclaim and rebuild their food systems. Hope in the baby steps that our province (and Atlantic Canada) is taking toward a basic income. Hope in the hallways of our schools with the expansion of school meal programs. Hope in the changes we’re seeing to income supports — still inadequate, but improving. Hope, above all, in the commitment of people across the province to change.
This year, I found a lot of my own hope in the times our team spent together. We’ve got an incredible group of people working together at Food First NL right now — our 17 (!) staff, our great crew on the Board, and our new (incredible) Lived and Living Experience Advisory Group. It is such a privilege to work with all these people, who are the most caring and thoughtful bunch you’ll ever meet. It’s also a lot of fun.
As we look forward to 2024, we know that the hard stuff isn’t going anywhere fast. For too many people, a province where everyone can eat with joy and dignity is still a dream. As always, we’ll be putting our shoulder to the wheel to help change that. We couldn’t do any of that without our many supporters and allies. Thank you for all that you do.
Joshua Smee
CEO