Though we evolved over our nearly 30 year history, empowering students and supporting youth leadership around food issues was always the core of our work.
1993: Roots
As a seventeen year old undergraduate at Wilfrid Laurier, Rahul Raj faced an interesting choice of what to do with his excess meal plan points at the end of the year. Ignoring a friend’s suggestion to buy a lifetime supply of gum, and inspired by his grandmother’s teachings about the importance of helping those in need, Rahul instead decided to use those points to support a food drive on campus. It was on this principle, that students could spring into action to make a difference, which led to the founding of Meal Exchange. Through Meal Exchange, Wilfrid Laurier hosted its first successful food drive, with students donating hundreds of meals using their meal plan cards. This concept launched Meal Exchange’s first program, Skip a Meal.
1996: Growth
Rahul and Ryan Saunders wrote their thesis on creating and managing a non-profit organization, as a guide for Meal Exchange’s expansion. This led to Meal Exchange expanding to other universities, with the University of Guelph being the first to the table. Meal Exchange’s first chapter director at the University of Guelph was a young Dave Kranenburg.
1998: MX Becomes a Charity
In addition to expanding the campus chapter network to include the University of Windsor, in 1998 Meal Exchange became officially registered as a charitable organization.
1999: First Trick or Eat Campaign
The first Trick or Eat campaign ran this year at St. Thomas University, New Brunswick. Trick or Eat reimagined the Halloween experience of Trick or Treating. Instead of candy, up to thousands of volunteer Trick or Eaters collect food items from tens of thousands of households across Canada. Over the program’s 20 year lifetime, millions of dollars worth of food were collected to support students and communities who were experiencing food insecurity.
2000: Recognition
Meal Exchange was the recipient of much public notice in 2000, being described as one of “Canada’s most innovative non-profit organizations,” in a Maclean’s article, as well as being a runner-up for the prestigious Peter F. Drucker Foundation Innovation Award. Palmer Jarvis/DDB also designs an extremely successful print campaign for Meal Exchange, so much so that posters were stolen from campuses to hang in dorm rooms and student housing across the nation.
2001: Chapters Formed
Chapters at the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, St. Thomas, St. Mary’s and Brock University, and the University of Alberta-Augustana campus were formed. The highlights of this year were the receipt of a grant from the McConnell Family Foundation, as well as Meal Exchange’s history and expansion being used as a case study in a university marketing textbook.
2003: MX Finds a Home
The 401 Richmond building in downtown Toronto, a restored industrial building that is home to several artists, galleries, and other creative, artistic, and nonprofit organizations, became Meal Exchange’s longtime home and national office until 2020.
With generous support from studentcare.net, Meal Exchange formed the Student Food Network, its first social incubator project. The Student Food Network was a student-founded, youth-led initiative that connects campus food centres to each other through a network of resources. Meal Exchange hosted its first national conference Esurio aimed at students, titled ‘Understanding Through Action: Leading Social Change.’ Esurio went on to be called The National Student Food Summit, which was hosted annually until 2021.
2006: Portraits of Hunger
Portraits of Hunger was a youth-led national theatre project featuring the stories of hunger in Canada from research and writing by students.The brain-child of the second annual Esurio leadership conference, Portraits of Hunger was Meal Exchange's second Social Incubator project.
In partnership with the Ontario Association of Food Banks, Meal Exchange launched the Ontario-wide lecture series Food for Thought on campuses across the province. Meal Exchange partnered with Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train programme to raise food and awareness for local food banks in communities across Canada and the United States.
2008: 2 Million Milestone
Between 1993 and 2008, Meal Exchange’s programs generated 2 million dollars for those in need across Canada, 1.2 million of which was raised between 2004 and 2008.
In partnership with Bishop Strachan School in Toronto, Meal Exchange produces the first full length adaptation of Portraits of Hunger, 4 Corners, which was performed to raise funds for Meal Exchange and awareness for the 2.5 million Canadians facing hunger.
2009: Stomach This!
The first Stomach This!, a workshop on food security, took place on March 21, 2009 in Toronto. Twenty youth aged 15-24 from a diverse range of cultural, socio-economic and educational backgrounds attended to broaden their knowledge of hunger and food security, and to learn how to mobilizie their communities to take action.
This year, the University of Guelph Meal Exchange Chapter was awarded the June Callwood Outstanding Achievement Award for Volunteerism in Canada. This award recognized volunteers for exceptional leadership, innovation and creativity, and significant contributions to their community and the province.
2010: Inaugural National BBQ Day
August 7th, 2010 was designated the first National BBQ Day, where Canadians from all across the nation were invited to bring their friends and neighbours together for a BBQ, for good food, good company and to raise awareness about hunger in Canada. National BBQ Day ran for four successful, delicious, and fun years.
2011: Campus Food Systems Project
Meal Exchange grew to be a 5 person organization after receiving funding from the McConnell Foundation to fund the Campus Food Systems Project in partnership with Sierra Youth Coalition. This project enabled Meal Exchange and Sierra Youth Coalition to coordinate student efforts on nine university campuses with the aim of changing university food procurement policies to support local, sustainable food systems. Applied student research was used to increase the collective understanding of local, sustainable food procurement.
2012: National Student Food Charter
The National Student Food Charter was launched in August 2012 at the National Student Food Summit. The creation of the National Student Food Charter was a visionary document that connected students across the country in order to support student involvement in discussions of food on campus.
2013: Ontario Campus Food Systems Project
Meal Exchange launched the Ontario Food Systems Project with a focus on supporting more student engagement and education and ultimately more procurement of Ontario food to Ontario Campuses. Meal Exchange was now working on local, sustainable food production and procurement on 12 campuses across Canada. New projects including community kitchens, linking gardens to local food agencies and local food days bubbled up across the country. In 2013, Meal Exchange also ran its largest Trick or Eat Campaign in history raising over $475,000 worth of food and $19,000 of funds for food agencies across the country.
2014: Beyond Campus Food Banks Project
In 2014, Meal Exchange and Community Food Centres Canada partnered on the Beyond Campus Food Banks project to explore how a community food centre (CFC) model could find a place on campuses, based on the interconnection and prevalence of food insecurity, poor diet and social isolation on campuses, which the CFC model had great success at addressing. The project engaged students in the Students for Good Food For All campaign, and led to the creation of resources focussed on increasing dignity and effectiveness of campus food banks.
2015: Real Food Challenge
Meal Exchange began a formal partnership with the U.S based Real Food Challenge, an organization that empowers students to advocate for campus food systems that are nourishing to food consumers, producers, and the earth. Meal Exchange and the Real Food Challenge worked to adapt RFC’s award winning program and bring it to Canada, eventually leading to the creation of the Good Food Challenge in 2017.
2016: Hungry for Knowledge Report
Meal Exchange published the groundbreaking Hungry for Knowledge report in McLean’s Magazine. This was the largest ever cross campus study of student food insecurity in Canada; nearly 40% students surveyed report experiencing food insecurity over the past year. The study demonstrated that food insecurity on post-secondary campuses was a serious and growing issue, and paved the way for Meal Exchange’s leadership in student food insecurity research in the coming years.
2017: Campus Food Report Card
Meal Exchange launched the inaugural Campus Food Report Card. The Report Card collected data from thousands of students and campus food service providers to assess local, sustainable, healthy, and accessible food on Ontario University campuses.
2017: Students Feeding Change
In response to student and campus stakeholder momentum after the release of Hungry for Knowledge, Meal Exchange launched the Students Feeding Change project on two unique campuses, Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) and Lakehead University. The project brought together stakeholders representing multiple levels of the university and community system through innovation lab workshops, to identify barriers to student food insecurity and co-create solutions. The project ran from 2017-2020 and included the piloting of several campus-specific initiatives to address food insecurity including awareness campaigns, food markets, grocery bus services, affordable produce box programs, Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives, and a community meal program.
2017: Good Food Challenge
Meal Exchange worked with students on campuses across the country to launch the Good Food Challenge, adapted for Canada from the U.S based Real Food Challenge. From 2017-2020, students on campuses across the country campaigned in support of the Good Food Challenge Campus Commitment, calling for schools to engage with the values of students and shift food purchasing to more “Good Food”. St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo and The University of Victoria Students’ Society became signatories to the Good Food Campus Commitment.
2020: Good Food Now
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Meal Exchange’s efforts quickly shifted to supporting the needs of students across the country facing rising food insecurity. In 8 communities Meal Exchange was able to create partnerships with campuses, food organizations, and student groups to provide over 3000 boxes of fresh, mostly local food to over 800 students. In addition, we were able to provide 1300 students with grocery and market gift cards to purchase food.
2020: Communal Lunch Project
Starting in 2020, Meal Exchange partnered with lead researcher Jennifer Mitsche and chef activist Joshna Maharaj on a new initiative which seeks to reinvent what it means to eat lunch on campus, The Communal Lunch Project. The Communal Lunch Project empowered students to lead cooking sessions and cook alongs and partnered with producers to provide students with healthy, fresh, and local food. Over the course of the partnership, 40 virtual events were hosted, 600 students participated in programming, and 320 boxes of local food was distributed to students.
2020: Good Food Campus Program
The Good Food Campus Program (GFCP) grew out of learnings from the work of both the Good Food Challenge and Students Feeding Change, and emerged as a core program amidst rising student food security due to the pandemic. Through the GFCP, Meal Exchange worked closely with individual campuses to act as a catalyst for increasing access to good food by empowering students to have their voices heard, facilitating collaboration, collecting student food experience data, and supporting innovative change unique to the needs of the campus.
2021: Student Ambassador Network
From February 2021- June 2022, Meal Exchange partnered with Health Canada’s Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion on the Canada’s Food Guide Student Ambassador Network. Through this project we supported 30 student ambassadors, representing all 10 provinces, who led work on their campus to engage students in the key messaging from Canada’s Food Guide, and built collaborative partnerships and relationships to support healthy eating on post-secondary campuses.
2021: Promoting Food Security in Higher Education
In early 2021, Meal Exchange partnered with the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute, the Guelph Lab, and the University of British Columbia, the University of Guelph, McMaster University, and the University of Ottawa to launch the initiative “Promoting Food Security in Higher Education”. The goal of the project was to catalyze a network of university administrators, researchers, students, staff and food service providers working to promote food secure campus communities. The project included a first of its kind conference in March 2021 which brought together 300+ attendees (watch the conference events). The collaborations also led to the development of principles to guide and inspire action on student food insecurity, and a readiness assessment that analyzed existing responses to student food insecurity on individual campuses.
2021: National Student Food Experience Surveys
In October 2021, Meal Exchange supported a cohort of student leaders to conduct a National Student Food Experience Survey to assess how students have been impacted by food insecurity during the pandemic and to inform initiatives to improve student access to food. The published national report compiled data from more than 13 post-secondary campuses nation-wide, building off Meal Exchange’s previous Hungry for Knowledge report. The report found that 56.8% of students faced food insecurity in Fall 2021. The report also highlighted key barriers in student access to good food and detailed student experiences to inform policies and initiatives to address student food insecurity that directly reflect their needs.
2004: Student Food Network & Esurio
2007: Holiday Train & Food For Thought
2022 : Meal Exchange Sunsets
Having proudly mobilized Canadian post-secondary students and campuses to address food insecurity over the past 30 years, Meal Exchange’s board and staff made the difficult decision that the time came to consciously sunset the organization. We remain firm in our commitment to leave our student communities in a better place on the matter of food insecurity, however we believed it was time to step aside and create space for others to play a part in tackling this massive issue.
We are proud of all those who contributed to our mission and would like to express immense gratitude for your passion and dedication in advocating for healthy, just and sustainable food systems. Our website will remain a digital legacy with resources that can support other individuals and organizations for years to come, and ultimately benefit the nonprofit and student community.
We wholeheartedly celebrate the people, stories, and impact of this organization over the last 30 years!
Click here to take a trip down Meal Exchange memory lane, enjoying some photos and stories from the MX community.
