The SEED Team
Tom Armitage
Manager of The SEED
Nicole Leighton
Grocery and Market Coordinator
Kari Badgerow
Wholesale Services Coordinator
Omelnisaa Giddam
Shelldale Farm Park Coordinator
Kaitlin Ball
Customer Service Lead
Dawn Raynard
Warehouse Associate
Jude Keefe
Warehouse Associate
Sarah Wilmer
Fresh Food Rx Coordinator
Logan Pollock
Warehouse and Delivery Coordinator
Danielle Steed
Market Lead
Emily Colley-Divjak
Grocery Pack Lead
Madeline Barber
Communications Coordinator
We want to thank Greg Fess Photography for the above staff photos! Greg and his team were fast, professional, and put the team at ease for this shoot! See more of his work at https://www.instagram.com/gregfessphotography/ and https://gregfess.com/
The SEED is a program of Guelph Community Health Centre (Guelph CHC). The vision of Guelph CHC is a community with no barriers to health and wellbeing, The SEED’s role of increasing food access fits snugly within this vision! As such, The SEED receives support from the following Guelph CHC staff (and many others).
Kate Vsetula
Director of Community Programs and Development
Shearin Fahandazh
Student and Volunteer Coordinator
Melissa Kwiatkowski
CEO of the Guelph CHC
Balu Mistry
Finance Manager
The programs we run would not be possible without thousands of hours contributed by amazing volunteers. The following posts highlight contributions from SEED champions!
From $1.2M to $2.2M in Donated Food: How Strategic Investments Are Fueling Greater Food Access
At The SEED, we are driven by our mission to ensure that everyone in our community has access to healthy, affordable food. In 2023, we distributed $1.2 million in donated food across Guelph-Wellington, but thanks to key investments and strategic improvements, we’re...
Fresh Food Prescriptions – Increasing Access to Nutritious Food in Health Care Settings
“We can access fresh fruit and vegetables and not have to stress about the financial aspect of it," said Crocker, "Money is tight, certainly for seniors, money is tight. Everything's gone up, gas has gone up, food at the stores have gone up, we might have been able to...
October 2023 SEED Champion: Tesfay Okubahans
Every month we highlight someone who makes the SEED the do-it-together movement that it is. It takes a community to feed a community, and we’ve got an incredible community. This month we want to introduce Tesfay Okubahans! Tesfay has been a community gardener since...
September 2023 SEED Champion: Jennifer Maddock
Every month we highlight someone who makes the SEED the do-it-together movement that it is. It takes a community to feed a community, and we’ve got an incredible community. This month we want to introduce Jennifer Maddock! Jennifer has been a volunteer at The SEED for...
The Development of the Upcycle Kitchen
The Upcycle Kitchen is a volunteer-led initiative that takes food that would have otherwise gone to waste and is instead cooked to make frozen meals or baked to make fresh and frozen muffins for sale. When we began the project in 2018 it had different outcomes...
August 2023 SEED Champion: Evan Graham
Every month we highlight someone who makes the SEED the do-it-together movement that it is. It takes a community to feed a community, and we’ve got an incredible community! This month we want to introduce Evan Graham! Evan has been a SEED volunteer since the early...
Applying Social Enterprise to Food Access Programming – The SEED Markets
In the previous post I spoke about the origins of The SEED, the reports that encouraged collective action, and the first steps we took in centralizing cold storage and distribution of nutritious food in our community. In this post I touched just briefly on the fact...
The SEED’s History: Establishing Centralized Storage and Distribution
The food system has been broken for decades. Food banks were created as a short-term intervention to provide access to food among people facing poverty during hard economic times. The Canadian Association of Food Banks was established in 1987 and Guelph has had a...
July 2023 SEED Champion: Tristan Henderson
Every month we highlight someone who makes the SEED the do-it-together movement that it is. It takes a community to feed a community, and we've got an incredible community! This month we want to introduce Tristan Henderson! Right from the start, Tristan has blown us...
Program Spotlight: Good Food Distribution
Food insecurity is an income-based issue. Since incomes exist on a spectrum so too does food insecurity. There are many people in our community who are marginally food insecure, that means their household incomes are such that they worry about running out of food...