Are you someone who believes that everyone deserves the right to healthy, safe, personally acceptable food? If so, we need a few hours of your time and your attention to detail!
Every two years the Provincial Health Services Authority conducts province-wide Food Costing in partnership with the regional health authorities and volunteer food costers. The Food Costing Report generated as a result of this work provides an important tool that measures how much it costs to eat a healthy diet in different regions across BC, monitoring the cost of 67 food items for a family of four.
It’s that time again, and we are looking for talented volunteers to help with this work – that’s where you come in! The work involves going to selected grocery stores in communities across BC and recording prices of specific food items. Volunteers can choose which community or communities they wish to volunteer in. There are lots of stores in the Central Okanagan to cost!
All volunteers will need to be trained to collect the data by attending one of two live webinar training sessions in mid-May (dates/times to be confirmed) or by viewing the webinar recording prior to commencing data collection. Food costing will be conducted between May 23rd and June 5th and will take approximately 2 hours per store to complete. The total amount of time involved will depend on how many stores the volunteer chooses to cost. Volunteers may choose to work in pairs or alone.
Volunteering your time as a food coster is a tangible way to contribute to the important evidence base that informs our policy and programing work related to food insecurity in BC. Please contact your health authority lead listed below and identify which communities you wish to collect food prices for and how many stores you have the capacity to take on.
Thank you for your interest and help!
Jill Worboys, RD
250-469-7070 ext 12292