In the coming weeks, PTC will be amplifying some of the community leaders who are supporting our community’s essential needs. Whether you can share their story or contribute resources, we invite you to celebrate the resilience and solidarity of our friends and neighbours.

For six years, PTC called Vancouver’s Chinatown home. We felt very connected to our neighbours and the surrounding community there.

We made a meaningful connection with Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House, which provides programming, and educational, leadership, social and recreational opportunities to residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Right to Food is at the heart of their work, as nutritional vulnerability is a theme familiar to all.

We worked with them on several projects, partnering with them to bring food and culture together in their Hastings Street hub. In 2016 we co-hosted a ‘dumpling event’ for Jovanni Sy’s play A Taste of Empire/Sik Zeon Tin Haa (a play translated into Cantonese by Derek Chan). In 2018 we shared food and community at a reading of excerpts from Pedro Chamale’s Made in Canada. In 2019, Roots and Seeds: an interactive encounter brought together Urban Farming Poh-Pohs (grandmothers), PTC Intern Kathy Feng and PTC Associate Veronique West for a celebration of the gardeners’ harvest, while exploring questions of inheritance, resilience and legacy.

Six months ago we changed addresses, but we haven’t left our community behind. There is such resilience in the DTES community through the many challenges and hardships they have faced. Now, in this COVID-19 crisis, there is an opportunity to support them. Please consider contributing to the DTES Neighbourhood House fundraising campaign, created to ensure that food services to the most vulnerable continue uninterrupted.