**ANTI-HUNGER COALITION TIMMINS NEWS RELEASE**

On World Children’s Day, Anti-Hunger Coalition Timmins is challenging work places to brown-bag their lunches in support of United Way North East Ontario.

The Brown Bag Challenge aims to raise awareness of children’s access to healthy food while raising funds for United Way.

On Tuesday, November 20, people around the world will be participating in events for World Children’s Day — an opportunity to raise awareness of the fact that children have their rights denied every single day. The vision for this internationally recognized day is to build a world where every child is in school and learning, safe from harm and able to fulfill their potential.

United Way North East Ontario provides much needed funding to programs in Timmins that benefit children, including programs of Anti-Hunger Coalition Timmins (ACT). ACT’s Good Food Box, Community Gardens, and Collective Cooking programs — all of which benefit from United Way funding — help to increase household access of fresh, healthy, and affordable foods and teach cooking skills to children and youth.

“Many children in Timmins do not have access to adequate amounts of food, let alone nutritious foods — a basic human right”, stated Jennifer Vachon, Executive Director of Anti-Hunger Coalition Timmins. Jennifer continued to say, “A number of families accessing emergency food services in Timmins were surveyed this summer and one of the findings was that 44% of people benefitting from emergency food services are between the ages of 0-12.” The brown bag lunch symbolizes children’s school lunches and the need for children’s access to fresh healthy food.

The Brown Bag Challenge encourages a workplace champion to engage co-workers or employees in a friendly “challenge” to bring a brown-bag lunch to work and designate the money that would have collectively been spent on a restaurant or take-out lunch, as a donation to United Way. Workplaces can choose to do an office potluck or have individuals bring their own brown bag. In some workplaces, the office champion might decide to whip up some lunch for the group, or maybe the boss will get in on the action and provide a company sponsored lunch while staff make a donation to partake in the meal! Whichever way workplaces decide to organize their challenge, ACT asks that they register their event so they can be provided with a Brown Bag Challenge package.

While food access is the direct tie-in to the Brown Bag Challenge, there are many children’s rights that programs in Timmins are able to address because of funding provided by United Way, which is why ACT staff and volunteers felt it was important to hold this fundraising event on World Children’s Day.

The range of supports offered for children through United Way’s Helping Kids Be All They Can Be funding stream is impressive — education programming offered through the Timmins Learning Centre’s Homework Club; summer camp opportunities with Science Timmins, Le Centre Culturel La Ronde, Access Better Living, and Northeastern Ontario Children’s Foundation; winter activities with Kamiskotia Snow Resort; and ongoing supports through Sports for Kids Timmins.  

United Way helps to ensure local programs continue to receive the support they need. With 100% of United Way’s local fundraised dollars remaining local, donating to United Way Cochrane Temiskaming through the Brown Bag Challenge is a fun and easy way to ensure that children’s rights are respected and basic needs are met not only on World Children’s Day, but every day in our community.

To register your workplace for the Brown Bag Challenge, please email team@antihungercoalition.com or call 705-262-2499.

Filed under: Local News