THE GREEN LINE
VIDEO STORY
Know Your Neighbour: Mona Ahmed
The owner of Lebanese Garden in Kensington Market explains how she uses her restaurant's catering services to support social justice causes.
Mona Ahmed passes through the Lebanese Garden kitchen while staff prepare meals for customers.
: Sebastian Tansil/The Green Line.
sebastian tansil
Caring mastermind who loves spending quality time with friends and family. Empathetic and precise economist by training. Loves amber yellow as it reminds him of people dearest to him.
September 21, 2024
This video was produced by a youth journalist who participated in The Green Line's Alexandra Park Youth Journalism program in partnership with Scadding Court Community Centre. It's part of the series "Know Your Neighbour," which profiles the people and places important to community members in Alexandra Park, Kensington Market and Chinatown.
How did one restaurant go from struggling to stay afloat during lockdowns to catering for social justice groups?
Lebanese Garden is a restaurant on 366 College St. in Kensington Market that serves affordable Lebanese and Middle Eastern food. When it opened in 2020, the restaurant struggled right out of the gate as a result of Toronto's COVID-19 lockdowns. But store owner Mona Ahmed says she saw this challenge as an opportunity to expand Lebanese Garden's dine-in business into a catering model, specifically one that enables her to address various justice issues through her work.
Thanks to a network of relationships with different community and social justice organizations, Ahmed provides free or discounted catering to support causes she believes in, such as community organizing around anti-Black racism, Islamophobia and the local pro-Palestinian movement.
In May 2024, Ahmed decided to send food donations from Lebanese Garden to the People's Circle of Palestine, the student encampment at the University of Toronto, which was located a couple of streets north of the restaurant.
As a former student and student administrator at the University of Toronto, Ahmed says she knows how meaningful it is for student groups and activist communities to receive food donations and catering support to fuel the work they do.
"I was a student activist myself at U of T. I was active in rallies and social justice work,” she explains. “So, that's just doing this here through my business. It’s an extension of that. And it's a part of who we are."
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