What is extremely sad to me is that this has to even be thought about and considered by anyone, male or female, in the first place.

The thing is, we have the ability to provide nutrition to our citizens at a MUCH lower cost, or to subsidize food in most western countries. I was actually talking about this the other day - that if we TRULY wanted to, we could easily come together to end hunger. The world IS changing though - you can see ripples of it everywhere - and I like to think it is changing for the better...but things often get worse just before they get better and so I think we are in for a long learning process as we go along.

I am in Nova Scotia, Halifax specifically, and I can tell you you right now that we have food banks and a couple of soup kitchens - but if that is your only nutrition, you are going to end up malnourished. The soup kitchen will fill you up, but quite often it ends up being stale leftovers from tim hortons, soup, or macaroni and cheese. Hey - I am not saying that is a bad thing - it definetly helps when you need it. But the thing is, when that is all you have you are almost perpetually hungry anyway.

Food banks are good - they will give you 2-4 days worth of food, but you can only go once a month. And again, most of what you get here is carbs and grains and canned meats, and really is not that healthy. I will give them credit though because it helps to save money on the things you do get from them so you can spend that money on fruit and vegetables and meat.(or tofu, etc).

Since I am on social assistance(disability) I thought it would be interesting to show you how my money breaks down. I get $618 dollars per month. Of that, $400 is my rent. I am renting a room with a house with housemates and that was quite literally the cheapest I could find. Technically, my rent portion is not supposed to exceed $223 per month. There is just NO WAY you can find ANYTHING for $223 per month, I promise - unless you get into a housing co op, which has major wait lists. The shelters have been full and waitlisted here for months.

Aside from paying $400 in rent, I have to keep a cell phone on me because I am a fall risk. I choose the lowest plan available and taxes in it comes to just under $40. I have to buy a bus pass, which is $70, because I cannot walk, it simply is not an option for me due to my physical stuff. So I am left with $108 per month for food. I use the food banks, and it helps - but without a doubt every single month I am short and eating just boiled spaghetti for four or five days. I make do - I am not in any way saying I am not extremely thankful - and I am trying to get work from home. But things could stand to be alot better. I had a thought once - if each grocery story chipped in and donated 1-2 hundred dollars of fresh produce per month - that would probably create enough produce for each food bank client to at least have SOME fresh food weekly. I don't think that it is too much to ask for a large corporation - they often make donations to charity WAY higher than this. And of course regular joes can always make a donation.

I have thought about making a website/charity that sort of linked people together(through a social worker or something) where people could apply for extra grocery help/donate grocery tickets or things like that, but I am not sure how one would handle that - seems like an awfully big endeavor. I will say last summer halifax began planting gardens around the city to grow food - and ANYONE can take part in caring for it and thus getting produce from it at harvest. What a WONDERFUL idea.

So yes, this is alot of personal information, but I am fine with that - what I wanted to do was show you WHY I can see the validity of needing to do this and why it makes me sad. I still don't agree that it is a good thing to do, but I can't say I wouldn't try it or haven't thought of it when I was starving. It is better than selling your body, that is for sure.