Nursing students work to help food insecurity in North Central Regina

A group of nursing students have taken on a community nursing project out of the North Central Family Centre for their clinical placement.

The centre provides an abundance of services including a safe place for children after school, family literacy programs and food hampers.

The students quickly recognized that the lack of grocery stores in this area is a major concern.

“With the lack of food in this community, it is a food desert. It is only chips and cereal but no fruits and veggies, “said student Mackenzie Halifax.

This clinical group has a few solutions in the works, including the placement of greenhouse towers at the Family Centre to teach both children and parents about food sustainability.

Akilah Babyak is another student involved with the program and emphasised the importance of using this as an educational opportunity.

“Everything that we don’t need for the centre for the greenhouses, we’re gonna donate to the community. So then the kids can take plants home and teach their families about food sustainability as well,” she said.

The students have additionally been working to make bus passes more accessible, as lack of proper transportation is a hurdle for many trying to get to a grocery store.

Another challenge they face is lack of resources. The centre feeds approximately 60 children twice a day.

“They don’t have a dishwasher. They have a food sanitizer but as of right now, they have two workers in the kitchen who do all of the dishes before snack, after snack, before supper and after supper. So that’s a lot of dishes when they’re also trying to prepare all of the food,” said Lynzey Sanden, another student.

The group has started a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising $10,000 for an industrial grade dishwasher to keep up with the demand.

While this project is intended to promote nutrition and healthy eating, the students also discovered another battle that come along with community nursing: stigma.

“I heard all of the things around Regina of, ‘Oh North Central is a scary place to be, you wanna avoid that area, don’t move there.’ People are kinder here than most places I’ve been,” said Halifax.

“There is a substantial amount of homeless people in North Central but they work together and they survive and the centre is just the heart of all that,” said Babyak.

Anyone wishing to donate to this project can find their page here.