Mazon Canada Announces 20 School Food Infrastructure Grant Recipients

(cliquez ici pour la version en français // click here for the French version)

Mazon Canada is excited to announce 20 recipients of School Food Infrastructure Grants, totalling over $1.27M to support their work, with grants ranging from $2,500 to $160,000.

These grants will allow community organizations to purchase infrastructure and equipment for their school food programs, increasing access to nutritious food for students across the country. Together, these organizations support over 250 schools.

You can read more about the Mazon Canada School Food Infrastructure Grants in our initial announcement post, linked here.

Funding for this project has been provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada through the School Food Infrastructure Fund (SFIF). 

Organizations are listed below - we look forward to sharing updates as the projects progress!

Fredericton Community Kitchens Inc.

Fredericton, New Brunswick

Fredericton Community Kitchens’ Student Hunger Program serves lunches to low-income students across 25 schools in the greater Fredericton area.

With this grant, they plan to replace a broken-down a cargo van, allowing them to sustain the Student Hunger Program and continue expanding to schools in rural areas around Fredericton, reaching over 12,000 students.

Flourish! School Food Society

Victoria, British Columbia

Flourish School Food Society provides nourishing school meal programs on southern Vancouver Island, integrated with their experiential learning opportunities in school gardens, kitchens and composts.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a walk-in freezer and refrigerated delivery van— part of their expansion from 1,100 servings per day to 23 schools up to 2,500 servings per day to 35 schools.

Bethel Outreach Community Services

Brampton, Ontario

Bethel Outreach Community Outreach’s Inclusive School Lunch Initiative will deliver meals across 4 schools in the Region of Peel, targeting low-income, newcomer, and racialized students, particularly those from Black, African, and Caribbean backgrounds.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a refrigerated van, cold storage equipment, dry storage equipment, and kitchen equipment. This will scale the program in number of students served (up to 100), program frequency (up to daily), freshness of meals, and provision of culturally specific and culturally relevant meals (up to 2,000 meals per month).

Just Friends Food Bank Inc

Stanley, New Brunswick

Just Friends Food Bank provides daily snacks, breakfasts, and lunches for approximately 250 students at a K-12 school in Stanley, New Brunswick, with additional students served periodically at a school in Taymouth.

With this grant, they plan to purchase additional cold storage, dry storage equipment, and serving equipment. Having designated food storage for school food programming will increase the number of students served, increase the food bank’s ability to meet cultural and dietary needs, and increase their ability to accept surplus produce from local farmers.

Pirurvik Preschool Society

Pond Inlet, Nunavut

Pirurvik Preschool Society is launching a school food program that will provide healthy, fresh food to children in elementary and high school in Pond Inlet.

With this grant, they plan to install two geodesic domes, allowing for local greenhouse production and hands-on learning opportunities for youth and educators. This initiative will strengthen food security and support land-based, community-driven education in the High Arctic.

Sai Dham Canada

Mississauga, Ontario

Sai Dham Food Bank’s school food program ensures children across Peel Region have access to fresh and nutritious breakfasts. Through the Help & Feed Children’s Breakfast Program, they serve approximately 550 students weekly at 26 schools in Brampton and Mississauga, and they are also building a healthy muffin snack program.

Through this grant, they plan to purchase a refrigerated delivery van that will support the transportation of fresh, nutritious baked goods and other items for their Children’s Breakfast Program, reducing reliance on third-party donations, while improving food safety, consistency, diversity, local procurement, cultural relevance, and volume.

Squamish Climate Action Network

Squamish, British Columbia

Squamish Climate Action Network has launched a new school meal program in Squamish, BC. They provide 400-500 lunch meals daily to six schools and a breakfast program to all eight schools.

With this grant, the organization purchased new high volume cooking equipment, serving ware, and cold-storage capacity—improving cost-effectiveness and time efficiency, all while enhancing nutritional quality, and increasing the reliability of their meal preparation, storage, and transportation.

Toronto Foundation for Student Success

Toronto, Ontario

Bridging the Nutrition Gap, a project of the Toronto Foundation for Student Success, provides 1-2 supplemental healthy food portions to local Student Nutrition Programs in need each school day.

To expand reach and capacity, they plan to launch and equip a ‘School Food Hub’, with large-scale cold storage. Their work reaches over 60,000 students currently across 200+ programs. This food hub will also deliver food to an anticipated 350+ programs during the 2025-26 school year.  

Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association

Fort McMurray, Alberta

Wood Buffalo Food Bank Association supports school food programming across the Fort McMurray region, ensuring more than 3,150 students in 9 K–12 schools receive nutritious food each week. They fill and deliver school orders, moving nearly 1,000 pounds of fresh breakfast items and snacks weekly.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a refrigerated van with heating capabilities. This vehicle will ensure safe, year-round delivery of fresh food especially during extreme winter temperatures and allow the organization to expand service to additional schools and surrounding communities in the Wood Buffalo region.

360Kids Support Services Inc.

Markham, Ontario

360Kids supports school food programming at the iGrad School, a school of the York Region District School Board that provides vulnerable youth the opportunity to complete their high school diplomas in a supportive, flexible, and trauma-informed environment. They provide nutritious, culturally responsive meals daily to approximately 40 youth.

With this grant, they plan to purchase kitchen equipment and serving ware that will allow them to serve an additional 20 youth daily, deliver over 5,000 meals annually, and improve the efficiency, quality, and safety of food preparation.

Child Hunger Brantford

Brantford, Ontario

Child Hunger Brantford operates school-based food programs that directly address child hunger in partnership with six elementary schools within the Grand Erie District School Board and the Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board. Their programming currently serves approximately 520 lunches and 1040 snacks per week to 104 students daily.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a refrigerated cargo van to strengthen their food recovery and meal delivery capacity, aiming to expand service to 3 additional schools, increase weekly student reach by 50-70 students, and grow food distribution to over 2,300 meals/snacks weekly.

Exodus Deliverance Temple Inc.

Mississauga, Ontario

Exodus Deliverance Temple provides weekly food support and delivery to local schools, offering snacks, breakfast items, and lunches in coordination with teachers.

With this grant, the organization plans to purchase a refrigerator, shelving, dry-storage equipment, and other essential equipment. These improvements will expand their capacity, increase access to nutritious and culturally appropriate foods, and enable them to prepare more meals for students.

The Moving Forward Cooperative

Dorchester, New Brunswick

The Moving Forward Cooperative, through their partnership with Fort Folly, is helping to provide nutritious and culturally relevant breakfasts twice a week to all 105 students at Dorchester Consolidated School.

With this grant, the organization plans to purchase kitchen ware, serving ware, and a dishwasher – stabilizing and strengthening DCS’s breakfast program, while enhancing meal quality by incorporating more culturally appropriate and nutritious options.

PEI School Food Program Inc.

Stratford, Prince Edward Island

The PEI School Food Program is a provincial lunch program that offers all island public school students a healthy and affordable lunch option each school day. This year, they anticipate serving 1,000,000 meals a year to 22,080 students at 62 schools.

With this grant, they plan to purchase small distribution equipment to ease the burden of transportation and serving from the parking lot to the lunch table, including dolly carts and 3-tier carts – allowing for increased program distribution and participation.

Carrefour solidaire CCA

Montreal, Quebec

Carrefour solidaire CCA operates the Bar à salade program: twice a week for 25 weeks during the school year, they facilitate a cooking workshop with students to prepare large salads, which then are served during lunch to the whole school. Last year, they served over 1750 portions of salad and had nearly 300 participants.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a fridge, freezers, a salad bar, a dishwasher, and cookware for this program – equipment that will also support their cooking workshops for special education classes, including for newly arrived immigrants and students with disabilities.

The Bridge

Niagara Falls, Ontario

The Bridge is launching Bridge 2 Learn: a school-based pilot initiative to address food insecurity among elementary students in Niagara Falls. They are currently in partnership with two K-8 schools, serving over 400 students. Through Bridge 2 Learn, they aim to deliver daily breakfasts, lunches, and healthy snacks, with an estimated 25,000+ meals served annually across all sites.

With this grant, they plan to purchase fridges, a freezer, shelving units, a cart, industrial toasters, a prep table, and storage containers – allowing for program growth, higher-volume storage, more flexible food assembly, and faster breakfast service.

Red Door Family Shelter

Toronto, Ontario

Red Door Family Shelter is creating designated cold storage space for school food through the Fridge for the Future initiative.

With this grant, they plan to purchase a new industrial refrigerator to provide meals/snacks to the 109 children aged 6 to 17 who stay at their gender-based violence shelter. The fridge will be designated as specifically for storing school lunches, school snacks, and ingredients to be used in school food for the school-aged children in residence – up to 3,000 additional meals/snacks per year.

Coach John Leadership and Community Engagement Initiative

Scarborough, Ontario

Coach John Leadership & Community Engagement Initiative operates 4 school food programs in Scarborough, with a strong focus on the West Hill neighborhood. Each week, approximately 450 students are supported with up to 2,250 meals, provided daily.

With this grant, they plan to expand their capacity to produce, store and distribute nutritious meals, through the purchase of a cargo van, cold storage, dry storage, and kitchen ware, as well as some electrical panel upgrades at the central facility to accommodate this new equipment.

Stamp out Stigma for Mental Health Association

Newmarket, Ontario

Stamp Out Stigma for Mental Health Association currently provides meals and snacks to 250 students monthly across schools in Newmarket, Aurora, and Richmond Hill.

With this grant, they plan to purchase and install a fridge, freezer, and kitchen equipment to strengthen their school food programming. Through their Brain Food initiative, they aim to expand their impact to reach over 500 students per month across four schools.

Westview Centre 4 Women

St. Catharines, Ontario

The Westview Centre 4 Women is a resource centre that supports low-income women and children – and is initiating school food programming through their School Lunch Project. Through this initiative, they are providing the equipment and space needed for moms to prepare school lunches for students, while building relationships with local schools and providing food support for students who need healthy, culturally appropriate lunches.

With this grant, they plan to purchase cold storage, dry storage, kitchen ware, and minor renovations to prepare the space.