thetyee.ca has an excellent profile of CUPE member Diane Brown, who cooks at Vancouver’s Carnegie Centre.
Brown describes her efforts to cook healthy food for the people who frequent the centre’s food kitchen. She’s part of a team of several hardworking and talented CUPE members in the kitchen.
She says, “I think the people in this community are really given the worst. The worst housing, the worst food. That’s why I don’t budge on healthy cooking, because it shows them they deserve better.”
The article describes the Carnegie Centre’s kitchen as “an oasis in the nutrition desert that is the Downtown Eastside”. Carnegie has had food policy mandating fresh, healthy food for many years, Brown said.
The centre sells food at cost and gives tickets that volunteers can redeem for food. Anyone in the community can eat or volunteer there.
Brown is a member of CUPE 15. She trained at Vancouver’s Dubrulle Culinary School but rather than work for a restaurant got a job cooking for a tree planting company. “I always like to know who the people are I’m cooking for, otherwise it just doesn’t seem meaningful,” she told the Tyee.