barefoot vegan sept_oct issue.pdf

think that's part of the reason why we exist, just to support
those people who need it most in obtaining a meal that
they're not being provided with by society. Skipchen is just
about really trying to change people’s idea of the value and
worth of money and the value and worth of food and
people; the labour and the energy and transport and all
those resources, natural and man-made, that enable food to
be eaten by humans. I think it's basically about
understanding and communication and trying to change
our conditioned minds to a slightly more positive and
beautiful view of money.
I saw that you went recently to the
immigration camp in Calais, which I just
thought was such a fantastic, kind,
compassionate thing to do, especially in light
of the way the UK media portrays
immigration. What was that experience like?
It seemed like a pretty simple solution to us. The whole
situation with the immigration camp there is really, really
traumatic and it just shouldn't be in existence, due to the
fact that we know there is so much food wasted and
available. We had the resources to try and provide food.
We decided we had to organise and get ourselves there.
Hopefully we provided some energy and a bit of hope to the
people living in the camp. On reflection it was actually
pretty shocking to see how badly and incorrectly the
media portrays the situation and the politics of the
situation. We used the media attention that we gained
from it as a platform to point out that this issue and
the ones we campaign on are connected. You know the
food that we get through the café is predominantly
from the origins where these people are escaping and
fleeing. And why are these people leaving there? What
are they in search of here? And why are we not being
given this information by the media? It became a more
complex story and I think we're going to continue to
try and raise awareness of it in whatever way we can.
We’d love to be able to try and do more rather than
just spend five or six days in the camp. We lived and
we were welcomed into where the camp residents
were living, where they created their temporary
homes. It was an eye opener to see how resourceful
and positive they are. The media looks at the situation
from an outsider’s perspective and isn't really
narrowing in on the full scale of the problem or the
solution. It's just kind of exasperating to see the fear
cultivated in people’s minds about what immigrants
are going to do when they get here and the reasons
why they leave their homes in the first place.
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