Healthy Families Christchurch hosted a “Plenty to Share” dinner at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Christchurch, where 80 delegates with a passion for food resilience came together in the only space dedicated to both social enterprise and food during the forum.

The ‘Plenty to Share’ dinner saw Healthy Families Christchurch partner with Edible Canterbury, Christchurch City Council and Project Grow to host 80 local and national champions with a vested interest in fighting hunger and breaking the cycles of poverty in New Zealand come together for collaboration and networking opportunities.

Christchurch’s post-earthquake environment has meant there are a number of food resilience initiatives going on around the city.

Healthy Families Christchurch was aware that not all of them communicated strongly with each other, so we decided to use the Social Enterprise World Forum to incorporate a dinner with key note speak Michael Curtin from DC Central Kitchen in Washington.

Plains FM recorded Mike’s keynote speech while Healthy Families conducted interviews with key stakeholders within food resilience in Christchurch and they were added in to create several shows for the radio station to broadcast.

From the dinner, the Canterbury Food Resilience Network was offered a regular show on Plains FM to promote and highlight the work they are doing in the community.

The CFRN also mooted the idea of holding a regular meeting for people and organisations working in that space to be able to collaborate and share ideas.

Craig Dixon from Food Together, an organisation that provides affordable fruit and vegetable parcels for families in need expressed his willingness to work with Pasifika churches in coming up with a ready to eat fruit and vegetable parcel which would suit their needs.

It was a chance to engage a wide array of people not only with Healthy Families Christchurch, but also it was an opportunity to attend the Social Enterprise World Forum that otherwise would have been impossible financially.