Foodie Initiative
Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver campuses are places of learning, connections, and innovation—the heartbeats of the neighbourhoods in which they reside. Through food, we have the ability to create authentic connections & experiences and improve wellbeing for the students, faculty, and staff who spend the majority of their time on these campuses.
Our Foodie Program was born out of a desire to celebrate, support, and connect Simon Fraser University’s communities through food programming, food education, food security and sustainability. To achieve these goals, we’ve hired SFU’s first “foodie” to spearhead the program and outlined 3 pillars in our Foodie Project that will form the foundation as we foster a food culture on campus:
1. Digital Hub
Our Digital Hub (Welcome! You're here now.) is an ever-evolving home base for all things food at SFU. It’s a centralized place where you’ll find food content, programming, news, education, and tools—it acts as a basecamp to inform, inspire, educate, and connect.
2. Engage
We want to create experiences that drive engagement, showcase delicious food, educate our community, and support food growers, processors, retailers and restaurateurs. This means showcasing food, celebrating diversity, focusing on local and seasonal ingredients, supporting Indigenous food culture, and educating our community around any health, social and sustainability issues connected to food.
3. Launchpad
Creating a vibrant food culture on campus is not something that exists in isolation—it must be supported by a flourishing food industry off-campus. Our third pillar, Launchpad, was created to help nurture the local food community at large. The goal here is to help food entrepreneurs, social enterprises, student initiatives, that are focused on transforming our food systems.
We know our food choices impact our relationships, our environment, our health, and our future, and at SFU, we celebrate and prioritize these choices. We look forward to connecting with all the foodies on campus and in our community as we continue to grow our Foodie Program.
Get in touch with us at Food[at]sfu.ca if you have an idea for collaboration.
