News release details

Family activities, special admission fee for World Food Day this Sunday at Museum

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank are teaming up for World Food Day at the Museum, featuring family activities, international storytellers and information booths.

Admission to the Museum's galleries will also be reduced to $5 for anyone who brings a donation of non‐perishable food items for Winnipeg Harvest food bank.

The "Rights Today" gallery on Level 5 is the centre for family programs designed to increase awareness about the right to food as a global issue. An engaging activity called "Growing a Better Future" uses lunch bags packed with surprise food items (or maybe nothing at all) to get children thinking about access to healthy food. Another program, "Forced to Flee", helps participants understand choices facing refugees around the world risking hunger and starvation.

Among the storytellers are staff members from Mennonite Central Committee and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank who have worked to provide humanitarian relief in Africa, including one who personally experienced hunger as a child in Ghana. Another speaker has worked to combat hunger in Manitoba (see bios below). CMHR interpretive staff will also help visitors connect with exhibits focused on the basic human rights to food, including an array of everyday items such as coffee, cooking oil and drinking water.

What: World Food Day at the CMHR
When: 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday, October 16, 2016
Where: CMHR, 80 Israel Asper Way, Winnipeg

Activities in the Museum's galleries are included with regular admission fees. Free programs in Bonnie & John Buhler Hall include colouring activities and information booths presented by Winnipeg Harvest, Food Matters Manitoba and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

About the storytellers 

Throughout the afternoon on World Food Day(Sunday, October 16), storytellers will be on hand in the CMHR's "Rights Today" gallery to share their experiences combatting global hunger. They include:

• Vurayayi Pugeni: a humanitarian relief and disaster recovery coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). While in Zimbabwe, Pugeni worked with local and international organizations where his main role was to implement and manage emergency food assistance projects during times of crisis, as well as agriculture and livelihood projects to help people improve their lives over the longer term. Based in Winnipeg, Pugeni works with MCC partners on projects across Africa in project planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
• Benjamin Ofori: a senior policy advisor on international food assistance at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Prior to this position, he worked with organizations in West Africa helping to fight poverty. Ofori has personally experienced hunger growing up in Ghana. Through his role at the Foodgrains Bank, he works to advocate for better national and international policies to help end global hunger.
• Gerri Belanger: an Anishinabe/Métis woman born in Winnipeg, who spent her early years in the city before moving to a small town in western Manitoba to be closer to her grandparents. After facing personal struggles, Gerri recovered and felt the need to give back and pay it forward, which brought her to Siloam Mission as a volunteer. She later became a staff member and is now a valued board member at Siloam. Gerri now lives in Kenora, working casually at her two passions, the Quilt Shop and the Women's Shelter.