I want to show you how change is made on a daily basis.
As a photojournalist & documentarian, I’m on a mission to find everyday stories that show how people around the world are making a difference for their communities.
If there’s one story that connects with us all, it’s a food story. Whether you’re breaking bread with family or sharing a meal with new friends, food serves as a common language across all cultures.
Behind every food story are people like farmers, truck drivers, grocery workers and cooks, all playing a role in getting food from the farm to your plate. Together, food systems employ close to 40% of the world's workers. That makes food the world's largest source of jobs.
Then there’s the part of our food systems that we don’t talk enough about: food waste. If you’re wondering about the numbers, an estimated 1 billion meals a day are being wasted.
To put that into perspective as a Canadian sports fan, if all that food waste filled the 40,000-seat stadium where the Toronto Blue Jays play baseball, we would need 1,000 stadiums packed solid, with the retractable sky dome closed.
It’s important to understand this challenge because while a billion meals are being wasted daily, 783 million people face hunger & another one-third of the world’s population remains food insecure.
Last year in Canada, approximately 9.8 million people, including 2.3 million children, struggled to afford the food they need. This happens again while over 46% of all food in Canada gets wasted annually.
This is a story I’ve been wanting to tell because 41% of that food waste is completely avoidable. So I spent a day with the Change Made team to document how a local food charity in Toronto’s East is driving everyday change through food rescue.
Location: 5N2 Kitchen & Farms
SCARBOROUGH, CANADA
9:13 AM: Scarborough is Toronto’s easternmost suburb, defined by its immigrant culture, ethnic eats, and blue-collar industrial buildings mixed with small business and commerce. In the corner of one of these industrial plazas, I arrived on site with my team to visit 5N2 Kitchen and Farms. As a food charity, 5N2 has been operating and serving local communities for 14 years now.
9:27 AM: Raymond, the head chef at 5N2, arrives shortly after 9:00 AM and begins his daily rounds to check the temperatures of the kitchen fridges and freezers. When feeding others, food health and safety remain among the most important and overlooked components of food rescue work.
The Rescue
9:42 AM: Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization, partners with local charities like 5N2 Kitchen & Farms to help redistribute food that would otherwise go to waste. 5N2 receives two deliveries of rescued food a week from Second Harvest, then prepares it into cooked meals and distributes them to other community organizations.
As the rescued food deliveries poured in, the loading docks at 5N2 overflowed with boxes of produce that would have otherwise been sent to the landfills because grocery stores are constantly cycling in fresher goods for demand.
The Sort
10:03 AM: Back in the kitchen, staff prepared to sort through more packaged baked goods and sandwiches that 5N2 had rescued from 9 different coffee shop locations in downtown Toronto.
10:19 AM: Het Patel, a volunteer at 5N2, begins the large sorting process of the fresh produce. Volunteers record all rescued food items in their inventory to support meal planning and distribution to community partners. Volunteers weigh and account for everything delivered by keeping track of what comes in.
Seema David, founder of 5N2 Kitchen & Farms, shares that “food rescue is not predictable” and requires planning on the fly as different food comes in, like shopping for ingredients that aren’t being donated so meals can be made.
5N2 runs different programs focused on food rescue, including their fresh meals program, which turns rescued food into prepared meals, and their food meals support program, which provides raw ingredients to partners who prepare their own meals.
“Anything that is worth something is going to be hard”
- Seema David, Founder at 5N2 Kitchen & Farms
The Prep
10:51 AM: The larger component of food-rescue work involves 5N2 volunteers prepping ingredients for meals cooked that day or freezing items for recipes to cook later that week or month. Veggies get chopped, potatoes get peeled, and greens get sorted, removing the fresh from the wilted.
11:28 AM: A prepared meal delivery is picked up by local partner Scarborough Centre for Healthy Community. 5N2 Kitchen distributes over 4,900 meals and meal supports weekly to their 25+ community partners. A few minutes later, a meat rescue from a large grocery chain is delivered for volunteers to sort and store for future meals.
The Cook Out
11:48 AM: Back in the kitchen, 5N2 Head Chef Raymond DL has been working with 5N2 volunteers on the prepared meals. Today’s prepared meal recipe: sweet and sour chicken stew was already planned last week with rescued food items that were frozen for later use.
12:17 PM: Finished meals are garnished, packaged and sent to the kitchen fridge for distribution to community partners the following day.
The Container Farm
A new addition and program by 5N2 is the farms they started during the pandemic to help address food insecurity in Scarborough. They started with a community garden at their first location and immediately saw how needed it was. Founder Seema David shared that she wanted to provide fresh food 365 days a year, which led her to explore options for indoor farming. She saw container farms as a solution and applied for a grant, which helped them bring the idea to life and purchase two container farms from Freight Farms in Boston, MA. With limited storage space, they brought the container farms inside their facilities so they could operate year-round.
1:35 PM: Miguel Isla is a 5N2 staff member who oversees the container farm's day-to-day operations. Each day can look different depending on harvest or distribution, but it all starts with seeding. Miguel shows us the detailed process of sowing different greens for the container farm as he sows the herb seeds in the grow trays.
To enter and capture the container farm, we geared up with personal protective equipment to ensure our clothes and shoes don't introduce cross-contaminants to the freshly grown produce. The container farm can grow a variety of greens, from lettuces to herbs.
2:24 PM: Staff member Miguel Isla harvested fresh greens from 5N2’s container farm for a farmers' market. Seeding and transplanting take weeks of careful maintenance, monitoring lighting and temperature, before the greens are ready to harvest. This innovative addition to 5N2 is speaking to the larger challenge of food sovereignty in local communities where most food can only be purchased at a grocery store.
4:15 PM: 5N2 also gave us some freshly farmed greens to take home as we wrapped up our day documenting the food rescue journey. The container farm gives 5N2 Kitchen & Farms an opportunity to build additional income to support their food rescue operations through weekly subscriptions and purchases by community members.
The Change Made
When we think about creating change, it’s usually the people on the ground with lived experience who have the knowledge to address the challenges in their communities.
What I learned from spending a day documenting this food rescue journey is that change happens in small steps. Food-rescue deliveries and meal preparation are small actions with big impact. It keeps good food out of the landfill and makes sure fewer people go hungry. The farm adds another layer for long-term change by showing us how fresh, healthy food can be made accessible to everyone.
The staff and volunteers who contribute their time at 5N2 help people access food more easily, without worrying about affordability. We can also help create change by learning how people around the world address challenges like food insecurity, or by measuring how much food in our own homes goes to waste so we can learn to waste less.
This is what everyday change looks like.
About 5N2 Kitchen & Farms: Founded by Seema David, 5N2 is a charity that provides fresh, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food to communities across the Greater Toronto Area and especially in Scarborough.
For more information: 5N2.ca
About Think Tank Photo: Think Tank Photo designs innovative camera-carrying solutions for photographers, filmmakers, and visual storytellers. GO is a Think Tank Photo campaign built around an ongoing series that follows creators into the field with the FocusPoint Crossbody camera bag as they document the stories that catch their attention.
Learn more about Think Tank Photo: thinktankphoto.com
Explore the GO series: thinktankphoto.com/go
About Change Made: Founded by Sid Naidu, Change Made is a creative studio and visual journalism publication focused on storytelling change. We tell stories to help people create more impact in the world.
Follow us on Substack: thechangemade.com
Article by Sid Naidu | Documentarian
Sid Naidu is a photojournalist and documentarian from Scarborough, Toronto. He founded Change Made to highlight solution stories about culture, community and the people driving change. Sid has a background working across international development and the creative industries and is currently a Master’s student in Sustainability Studies at Trent University. His work has been published by Complex Canada, The Narwhal, PhotoED Magazine and The Globe and Mail.
Photography by Sid Naidu | BTS Photography by Ziyaad Haniff