INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEKLY WEFC BLOG

Greetings on behalf of the Board of Directors of West End Food Co-op and welcome to our “official” weekly blog.

Each week those of us on the Executive will take turns bringing you up to date on developments with our project and upcoming events.

And we have two exciting upcoming events: first is the launch of our winter Farmers Market at Sorauren Park today at 3:00 – if you were feeling depressed about the end of the Market season for 2009 snap out of it, turn off that movie, jump out of bed and come down to the park to see what’s on offer.  Second: mark your calendars for December 9 – we will be presenting the fabulous new doc Food Inc. (try googling this you will get a real-live big business food company!) with our friends at The Revue (another local, community owned enterprise).

More then two years ago now, a group of us from Parkdale-High-Park met to discuss the possibility of starting a locally owned and operated food co-operative.  Word spread quickly and we soon had a core group of 8 people plus a list of more than 20 others who wanted to participate in some way....

Graeme Hussey, a founding member, began dedicating more and more of his time to giving shape to our project and soon had recruited a dedicated group of volunteers with diverse backgrounds and skills.

By the Summer of 2008 Graeme (who has since moved to Ottawa and is much missed by us all!) Ayal Dinner, and others were putting the finishing touches on a plan to start a Farmers Market in Sorauren Park while at the same time applying for grants and designing the framework for our new business.

Numerous volunteers came and went (thanks to all!) and we soon met Sally Miller – a long time food activist and entrepreneur who shared our vision but also brought to the table necessary business development and organizational skills.   Sally designed our business plan – most especially our financial model – and made the transition from being a consultant to officially joining the Board of Directors of what was becoming a functioning co-operative.

This past summer we registered with the Province of Ontario under the Co-op Act and this past November 2nd at the Gladstone we had our official and very successful launch.  We are well on the road to building a broad-based, community enterprise.  We hope everyone will join with us to build a transparent, accountable, democratic food business – responsive to the needs and desires of our workers, our shoppers, our farmers and producers and our community partners like the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre.

Together we can build a better way to provide ourselves with affordable, healthy local food and other products and at the same time act as a catalyst for the kind of change many people in our neighbourhoods want and need.  The future is ours!  The time is now…