October Update & Thank you!

Thank you to all of our donors and volunteers who have made such an impact on the functioning of Food Not Bombs. October was a very busy and wonderful month.


FNB was able to serve at the October 8th, Peace Rally, the 10th year anniversary of the Canadian invasion of Afghanistan. There were many great speakers, a lot of the public came out to listen, there was a lot of free literature available, and of course a wonderful meal! The desserts went off with a hit, Morgan made homemade cookies and Neil bought a bunch of pumpkin pies.


On October 15th several FNB members, along with many of London's community members went to Toronto to participate in the first several days of the occupation there. Morgan made a bunch of food and donated it to the Toronto FNB chapter who was managing the food tent, Robin also made some lozenges that were mighty tasty and we brought those as well! Everyone was really happy to connect with other FNB chapters, we even got connected with a group from St. Catherine's! The Toronto FNB was able to feed all the occupiers the first several days we were there, which was really excited seeing as there were so many people there!


With what we all learnt and saw at Occupy Toronto we had a week to prepare for the London occupation. We were able to get a large kitchen donated to us by a church in town and goodness was it ever nice to have ten burners and two ovens. Along with all of the helping hands it made the work go by so quickly and we were able to make a huge meal for London's first ever general assembly at Campbell Park. Not long after the GA we migrated to Victoria Park where tents flew up. The food station had tents donated to it from Our Street (http://ourstreet.ca/) and got all organized. It was amazing to see how many donations just kept coming in. From food, to dish ware, to propane fuelled camping stoves, not to mention everyone who simply wanted to lend a helping hand or give us monetary donations. Ryan has been working at the occupation and I had the pleasure of mentoring him and sharing some tips about FNB. He's a great co-ordinater and has so many amazing people who are consistently helping out. It is day 17 of the occupation now and there has been an abundance of support from the community members. We often get hot donations for dinner, which everyone adores. The spirits are high even as the temperature is rising!


We also had our monthly community meal on Sunday, October 30th at the East Village Arts Co-operative (http://www.eastvillagearts.ca/). A couple of us cooked up a storm and had a wonderful serving. Around ten people showed up and shared a meal with us, it was wonderful. Jeremy and Tom donated a nice loaf of homemade bread, it was splendid! Luckily there was an EVAC member meeting going on around the same time as the serving so we were able to talk to them about becoming a member, and safe to say we're now a proud member of EVAC! Horray!
Thank you once again to all of the people who help FNB run so well, thank you to all of our donors, to all of the places that let us cooks our meals at their locations, to the places that host our meals.


More news to come soon!


-Rachelle