jessica chan – Production Resilience in Vancouver's Food System

November 22, 2017December 9, 2017

An ode to an onion: Farewell

”Time moves slowly but passes quickly”- Alice Walker

Throughout our journey, time seemed to almost stand still, leaving us impatiently awaiting responses from our contacts. The amount of automatic emails we received, and we received a lot, did little to ease our impatience. To our surprise, time did pass and here we are, finally anticipating our presentations. November is at its end, and December is inching towards us faster than we had expected. We are eagerly awaiting to showcase our efforts.

As we reflect on how far we have come, we take this final blog opportunity as a final chance to reflect on moments of significance. While researching Vancouver and communities around the world, benefiting from urban agriculture, we reflect on Vancouver’s many advances throughout the years as well. Not only have we found a better understanding for Vancouver’s community, but through researching other communities, we believe we have paved steps to help Vancouver reach resiliency.

Previous Weeks

We couldn’t possibly summarize everything that has happened in our semester, because nothing could express our feelings poignantly enough; however, if we tried to articulate what we’ve learned in summary, it would be in these three words: uncertainty, adaptation, and transformation.

It was great to have a team of members to rely on, people who could help us adapt our plan, and divide jobs to, from contacting stakeholders about information to researching data. In many instances, the keyword in our project arose quite often and we did our best to follow it, “Resilience”. Regardless of the challenges we faced everyday, every decision we made to those situations helped shape us to be better leaders, better teachers and better people.

In order to help our city have a more sustainable and tactical food resilience system, what should we do? Here, we would refer to Lisa Nichols, “[t]he doorway is for you to fit through, you trying to carry everybody else through, you are trying to be rescued by 911, and you gotta rescue you first.” In hindsight, we learned to expect unpredictable circumstances that may arise, and take responsibility to accomplish them regardless of how it needed to be handled. These efforts taught us to be more patient and confident, and to take challenges to improve. From bitter, distasteful moments we learned to adapt to uncertainties and curve balls. With great humility, we take these lessons to heart.

Accomplishments:

Collected data from stakeholders (Agro cite, Lufa Farm, Roots on the roof, Ryerson University Rooftop gardens—Carrot City Farm, Pullman Farm, Hollis Farm, Sky Harvest).
Learned a lesson from GMOs article : Professor Will taught us about how to improve our writing, that is by stating a clear thesis statement and integrating a quote properly rather than directly copying and pasting(Valley, 2017).
Able to conduct group meetings effectively (being prepared beforehand).
Completed infographic and correcting feedback and issues for editing
Submitted individual academic experiential review papers.
Published our Graceful Dismount, Blog 3
Graphics for inforgraphic drawn and coloured

Moment of Significant Change

What

There were several bumps along our road to success, where things did not run smoothly. During a crucial moment in the semester, one group member got injured. As a result, they were unable to attend a few group meetings and lectures, and unfortunately had to endure painful hospital visits. Another group member unfortunately could not attend the same group meeting due to car failure. An hour before our scheduled meeting, he found himself stranded somewhere away from campus and needed to get his car towed. Last minute, both members did not show up to the meeting.

Both could not attend a scheduled meeting, and the last minute notifications of said members failing to attend left a majority of the group somewhat dejected as we love their input. Also finding it somewhat disrespectful, as other members of the group were relying on their data for the meeting to run productively. As a group, we empathized for the members who could not attend, as we are sure they would rather be with us than in the hospital and stranded on the road. While the meeting could have run smoother with their inputs, it continued as planned.

We tried to reassign tasks as a consequent, since those members were unable to attend. We needed to quickly re-establish tasks for members who had attended the meeting, who would contact stakeholders as soon as possible. Fortunately, the members who missed the meeting were able to contact founders of organizations and arrange times for interview questions to be answered before striking up conversation about other inquiries with our stakeholder. The experience itself did allow us to reflex our adaptive abilities. In the end, we did manage to achieve the same outcome as our plan for the project and collect needed data, however the journey was bumpier than expected.

So what?

Thankfully, the interviews were successful. As the Sky Harvest founder Aaron Quesnel (personal communication, November 20, 2017) puts it, “we are facing challenges everyday.” Indeed, those words are relevant. Challenges arise at any given moment and it’s how we react that makes us leaders. In someway, we view our project as an onion. At the start, it had limitless possibilities to be incorporated anywhere. While untouched, our onion had the potential to be anything. All we could think of was how delicious it would be in a meal, or rather how useful it’d be to Vancouver. As we got into it, and real work began, and it brought tears to our eyes. Setback after setback really did stink. We desperately tried to peel back layer after layer that stood in our way, in an effort to get to the center. With all the brunt work finally completed, and all’s that’s left is the final edit of the infographic, we can transform our onion into something greater than the sum of its parts by incorporating elements of each member. We are a sustainable system, there is no waste. Everything that has happened, has served a purpose.

Regarding our situation, no broader issues arose as we acknowledge the efforts of the members who were beyond control of their circumstances. At this moment in time, we are all less emotionally invested, and pushing through personal feelings. For the last group reflection left us understanding that we cannot control everything, we can only compensate with our own abilities. Past experiences have taught us that we can only control ourselves and make use of a poor situation. As leaders, we tough it out. At the end of the day, confrontation and arguing seems irrelevant: a waste of time, effort and emotion. It changes nothing in our predicament. We have all committed so much time into this project that a pessimistic attitude seems inappropriate. Dwelling would not serve any purpose. If presented in the same circumstance, there is nothing we would change. We respect one another, and we accomplished our tasks for the week.

Now what?

Honestly, what’s left is the final push. We assign our final tasks to each member and we play on our strengths. Our group is comprised of great speakers, writers and creators. At the end of the day, it does not matter who presents because we have all contributed so much to the project. If circumstances arise in the future again, it will be a shame, but we will do our best to adapt to the situations. With less than a week for our draft infographic, all we can do is remind members of deadlines, of their tasks and what we need done. Otherwise, we tackle everything left to be done with confidence. Regardless of how we feel, we have done our best with the limited time and resources available to us and so long as we remain confident, we are unstoppable.

Upcoming Weeks

Slowly, but surely, we have finished conducting our research and interviews with our urban farm representatives. We have compiled our data and are now preparing for designing our infographic. It’s crunch time now, as we approach the presentation date (November, 29th 2017) in the upcoming week. We’ve familiarized ourselves with the Piktochart software and had some fun self-teaching with its advanced features.

We’ll be following Dr. Will Valley’s and Dr. Carmen Byker-Shanks’ recommendations for a well-constructed infographic. This will require us to share Vancouver’s story and its potential for resiliency. We will include our identified causes and issues as well as a structured layout of our data.

We hope that our infographic and presentation will inspire members of the community, raise awareness, and spur ambition towards improving our food system. Ultimately, we hope this will create an all-encompassing safe space for change later in our food system. Of course, if we fail to achieve these positive outcomes we hope our predecessors will follow in our quest for a more resilient Vancouver, in the upcoming year. Well, our journey with resiliency has been a blast, and we’ve learned so much about ourselves, each other and Vancouver in the progress (not to mention Brooklyn, Montreal, New York, etc.), and we have been humbled by the process and grateful we were able to end 2017 with a bang. We cannot wait to follow Vancouver’s resiliency journey is 2018 as well.

Group 1 would like to thank everyone who has kept up with our endeavors until now, as it definitely has been a long progress. A special thanks to our number one supporter Colin Dring, who’s constructive feedback helped push us to success.

Reference

(A. Quesnel, personal communication, November 20, 2017).

Lisa, N. (Producer). (2017, November 2). Be Inspired. A story that will change your life. Podcast retrieved from https://youtu.be/5NsykK5sAWg

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Valley, W. (2017). Session 11 – Developing infographics. Retrieved from: http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-10/

November 4, 2017November 26, 2017

A Graceful Dismount

”Positive people producing fresh insight and growing with the difficulties that may face us rain or shine.” -Group 1

Welcome back

It seems almost incredible the speed at which 2017 is moving, with November beginning and the first snow already upon us, it certainly has been a year full of events. As the seasons continue changing, with Winter just around the corner, we reflect upon moments of significant change that have helped define us throughout the term. As individuals, we have learned how to further harness our observational skills, interviewing abilities and urban food system analysis skills. The engagement required in Vancouver’s Food Strategy and Resilience: Food Production project has taught us how to properly articulate public food assets and communicate results and issues in urban agricultural systems, skills that would not have been possible without one another.

The last few months have been quite the experience, and while our data may just provide a baseline for future food production resiliency projects in Vancouver, we hope it helps to contribute to a more sustainable and diverse food system. While we are busy at work finishing our data analysis of well-precedented urban agricultural systems, in hopes of contributing to the greater good, we begin work on our infographic. Amidst our busy schedules we hope you all remember to stay warm; before we know it, Winter will have come. Group 1 wishes you a healthy and blissful November in the meanwhile

Weekly Objectives and Achievements

Previous weeks: What we accomplish?

In the preceding weeks, we have accomplished many of the goals we had set for ourselves in terms of group communication and organization, as well as goals for our Community-Based project (CBEL). For our CBEL Project, we have overall completed our proposed plan by verifying our direction and objectives, in understanding the city of Vancouver’s food production resiliency. We have enacted this plan by contacting various organizations’ leaders from Montreal, Vancouver, New York and Boston. This was necessary in order to collect data on food production space, yield, and infrastructure. Internally as a group, we overcame our initial conflicts and became more cohesive. This was evident in our effective distribution of tasks throughout group members such as contacting our organizations of interest and delegating research responsibilities. The organization has also been improved through sufficient utilization of communication methods, management of conflicting schedules and support.

Accomplishments included:

conducting interviews
delegating positions for infographic work
data analysis
weekly reflection

Upcoming weeks: What are our Objectives?

Now that we have conducted most of our research and compiled most of our data into excel sheets, our next logical step is to start building the foundation of our infographic. The ultimate goal is to achieve a professional, well designed yet easily readable infographic that we may share with Vancouver and the world. In order to do so, we are currently researching infographics. None of our group members are experienced with infographics; however, we are hoping that since we are not procrastinating that we will be at an advantage come further down the line. We conceptually understands the advantages and disadvantages of presenting by an infographic. Through researching other projects in our community, and engaging with others, we hope to build a social rapport with our stakeholders.

Since naturally after our project is completed, these are the people who will be most interested in our findings. We, as a group of prospective professionals, are in preparation for presenting our finding to the best of our ability. We know that this project was not only for us, but also for our future classmates and leaders. We introspect ourselves to see the flaws and limitations in the project. However, to some extent, we expect some unpredictable curve balls to be thrown our way such as: stakeholders refusing to come in contact with us, members failing to produce expected results, or being redirected when trying to collect salient and meaningful data. Rejection is definitely become a foresee circumstance.

By understanding potential, foreseeable uncertainties ahead, we acknowledge them. We were originally inspired by Shulman (2005), the author of Pedagogies of uncertainty; he said, “In professional education, it is insufficient to learn for the sake of knowledge and understanding alone; one learns in order to engage in practice.” We interrupted this accepting that challenges employ us with opportunities to practice our adaptability and understanding of conceptualized knowledge. If we understand a topic of well enough, we should all be able to execute our plans, regardless of which group member accomplishes it.

On the other hand, uncertainties challenge us to focus on our interactions as a group. For instances, our presentation skills which may be improved by pushing one another to give more examples, or explain answers in more clarity, or even make more concise and coherent conclusions (Shulman, 2005). In other words, we could resolve upcoming challenges with better reflections and planning ahead for upcoming stresses between academic workloads, extracurricular priorities and community expectations (Valley, 2017). As professionals, we do not learn by theories and practice alone, tasks and unexpected challenges are not resolved with single answers but with action and judgement (Shulman, 2005). As individuals, we draw from our experiences. Essentially, we argue that our experiences define us, and despite trying to be rational or logical, we will always try our best to resolve our issues with methods and techniques we’ve deemed successful in the past or what not to do, due to our past experiences (Shulman, 2005). As a group we practiced pedagogy by proposing ideas for the infographic and then pushing each other to better elaborate on why we are suggesting what we are, and relating it to our topic at hand: food production and resiliency.

Despite the project nearing its’ end, the journey of our academic professionalism has only just begun. We have gained so much experience and realistic logical skills in a short amount of time. This perspective will continue to stretch and hone the skills necessary to address potential anxieties that are bound to arise. Skills such as interpretation and systems thinking will allow us to be more confident in our explanations and thoughts, and rise to possible challenges that are bound to face us as professionals (Valley, 2017).

In all actuality, we believe that this first step into the Food System is a greater achievement than our actual goal of conducting an analysis of Food Production in urban agriculture in Vancouver, as our efforts were not fruitless. While in theory, yes, we would have wasted 4 months had we come up with nothing as a result, but our efforts we leave us with data analysis, honed interviewing skills and genuine confidence. We have gained a greater integrity in ourselves as leaders from it, and have succeeded in our commitment of willing to contribute efforts to serve our community with a more responsible and ethical service.

Moment of Significant Change Workshop

(Note: our graph’s slopes have arrows attached because we never stop learning, growing and feeling, which is the beauty of this reflection. We noticed the inverse nature of our knowledge slope to our emotions slope, which we found as a common occurrence among other groups. Pivotal moments of change where the slopes become sharp include description of why it veered in which direction it did.)

During last week’s tutorial session we took time to reflect as a group on our “Moments of Significant Change,” in a workshop led by Colin Dring. This exercise forced us to reflect on our progressive journeys in terms of knowledge, emotions and skills from week 0: from day 1 in picking our projects to week 8: arguably our midway point. This task then left us to question how we’d realistically or ideally like to see the future of this project leaving us up until the end at week 13.

It was quite interesting to see all the commonalities between six separate graphs constructed in private; it reminded us of our vexing moments of weak communication, organizational skills and expectations of one another had led to these results. The workshop then tasked us to collaborate each of our graphs into one graph representing the group’s voice in each aspect of knowledge, emotions and skills that illustrated our experience thus far. Afterwards, as a collective group, we discussed these feelings and explained why we felt what at a particular time to come to a consensus of where to draw each slope and to which degree of varying steepness.

We noticed feeling similarly, during different weeks in our journey: we started the project with mediocre knowledge of Food Production and Resiliency, but admit to feeling excited about a new surfacing topic in the food system world, and we were thrilled to see how much we’ve all learned throughout the progress, hitting our greatest stride currently as we are at week 8 after conducting interviews and reviewing documentation in Vancouver. We hope to continue learning more even while finishing up our infographic at week 13 about the demographics of food production and urban agriculture, even beyond the scope of this course. Before this project started, no one in our group was experienced in blogging and frankly our skills may not have been as high as we would have liked to believe. Up until week 8 we are still learning and learning how to be confident in our skills of analysis, interview and research. While we aren’t necessarily ashamed of our low reflection on our skills, we expected to learn more about blogging and infographics during the course rather than being expected just to know how to do it after several entries. There is just so much more we wish to learn, which is why we tried to be realistic with our graph’s depiction. Finally, we address our turbulent emotion’s trend line: we started the semester not knowing anything and being very optimistic; however, realizing we had no actual community leader to address concerns too, and then having our proposal rejected was very dejecting. It certainly has been a roller-coaster of emotions, that’s for sure. Moreover, starting a project with essentially strangers and having to rely on them for your academic well-being was very straining as well. As the weeks move forward, our group is praying for the best but bracing for the worst when we illustrate our downward sloping graph. With other academic priorities arising, and having a better understanding of our time management skills, we expect to be at lows and highs veering the end of our semester.

The process of illustrating our collective graph as you can see above was quite refreshing. The tutorial left us time to walk around and inspect reflections of how other groups were coping with the anxiety of their own projects. It also allowed us to see that other groups were experiencing the same distraught and frustrations during similar moments on our timelines from feedback and rejections. A key moment of how we all similarly agreed with the emotion graph trend, which steeply, sloped downwards to an extreme low nearing the end of the term. It’s safe to say Colin may have one of the most realistic tutorial class’ of the semester. With other priorities and personal issues that come with being a student, we expect to feel overwhelmed with looming deadlines which is why by planning for them, we hope to avoid them. As the projection of these feelings on the graph has visually provided us with something to expect in the upcoming weeks. Yes, there will be some other formidable stresses which are inevitable throughout this term. This time of reflection served as another reminder of consequences to come if we do not manage our time better, in order to avoid feeling as low as we have, especially if we procrastinate.

It certainly has been an emotional project, as you can see displayed on our graph; however without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there are limits to how much learning can occur, therefore we embrace it (Shulman, 2005). We believe a project is only as good as how you end it, and take humility and learning from the obstacles that may continue arising. This time around, we will not feel reject, we will not be emotional. We will take action. We will make judgement. We will succeed. Group 1 will brace for the worse but expect the best as positive people, growing with the difficulties that may face us rain or shine.

The Graceful Dismount

Organization has never been one of Group 1’s strongest asset; however, feasibility has been. As such, we have come to accept our flaws such as poor time management and learned to plan, plan and plan; therefore, we have set internal timelines and due dates for certain aspects of the project. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 shown below are examples of internal timelines and due dates for certain aspects of the project that we have planned after the workshop reflection activity, where we are clearly addressing our organizational issues. With democracy and delegation, we will be utilizing members to their strongest capabilities for the infographic and presentation. With research and data analysis having been conducted, and resources being collected, we are setting ourselves up for success.

At one point in The American Life’s (2011) podcast, we greatly related to was when they said if you are trying to create Rambo, you don’t coddle him when he is born, you give him the experiences to fight to be Rambo (The American Life, 2011). We felt these words resonate with our experiences throughout the course of this semester. When only after we completed our proposal with days away from the submission date were we warned about the flaws in our original idea and what we should have done. It was to give us the experiences to fight to become something greater. We have come to accept our flaws of having a poor time management skill, and we learned to keep on practicing our skills in adaptability by way of advanced planning. We expect to succeed through this.

Figure 1.1 – LFS 350 Group 1 Schedule Tracker

Figure 1.2 – A shared folder that contains data sheets and documentation for Vancouver’s Food Production and Resiliency project.

(Note: In order to hold team members more accountable to complete their tasks, we organized the documents in a shared file and wrote the deadlines on the spreadsheets to be clear who is doing what in a clear, convenient and accessible manner. )

At this point in the semester, we have gained more knowledge about rooftop gardens and a greater understanding of strengths of group members. Following the presentation and infographic, we want to utilize members to these strengths. Members who participated more heavily on the interviewing aspects of the project will not be presenting the infographic. We came to a consensus that we would like members who had more hands-on work dealing with the quantifiable units of the project gathered from research on Vancouver to convey the numbers on our infographic and they would most be comfortable relying sources of the data and be able to reveal more salient information than others.

While there is always room to continuing growing and learning, we are satisfied with our achievements. Some group members personally have families who work in Food Production facilities, who work strenuous graveyard shifts and early mornings. The humility of our project reminds of the labour and efforts of those contributing to Vancouver’s Food Production. Hence, as a group we appreciate how these busy people continue to contribute for improving food security for our futures. While it may not seem like it, the numbers on our findings are a greater representation than they appear at first glance; which is why, we look forward to inspiring you with our findings.

”Be humble. Stay focused. Live healthy.”- Group 1.

Reference

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25.

This American Life. (2011, December 2). 452: Poultry Slam 2011: Latin Liver. Podcast retrieved from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3#play

Valley, W. (2017). Session 9 – Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Required Readings + Resources. Retrieved from: http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-7-indigenous-food-sovereignty-moments-of-significant-change/

October 8, 2017November 3, 2017

The progress of the promising Proposal

“‘Positive people producing fresh insight and growing with the difficulties that may face us rain or shine,” -Group 1.

As November approaches and October wishes us well, the leaves continue changing colour, bringing a new Fall upon us. As the leaves continue to change, so does our outlook and growth as young professionals. As individuals we have come to learn how to support one another, learning how to become more direct and efficient in our communication. While we struggled to find a united voice within the first three weeks, our setbacks continued to push us beyond our comfort zones, demanding and inspiring us to work with what little we had to create.

The last few months have been quite busy, and we have accomplished many tasks, from finding contacts with well-precedent urban agricultural infrastructures to narrowing our over-ambitious ideas; however, our greatest achievement by-far has been the progress of our project proposal:( Vancouver’s Food Strategy and Resilience Proposal). While we continue to learn more about Vancouver’s Food Production and urban agriculture around the world, we encourage you all to experience the beautiful sights Vancouver has to offer.

A Moment of Significance

From the onset of the course, a precedent Professor Will Valley set was that we should ”expect the unexpected” (Valley, 2017). With so little of our project on paper, our group was under the impression that such a lesson would be learned later. However, such an unexpected wrench was thrown into our project right before our proposal presentation in the midst of tutorial. While ironing out details in our proposal of how to quantify the current production ability of downtown Vancouver, Will Valley offered insight as to how we should rearrange the nature of our project altogether. Rather than looking at the “negligible” amount of food Vancouver’s urban core is currently producing, a more relevant project would be to look at its possible production capabilities utilizing newer urban agriculture technologies.

Rolfe et al.’s reflective model allowed us to reflect as a group, and while the experience of considerably failing loomed upon us, it helped us reach beyond our comfort zone and take action (Rolfe et al., 2001).

What?

This event was significant in several ways. Initially, it tested our group’s ability to receive feedback. Our suggestions were not an attack on our work or theoretical concepts, but rather an useful insight to the purpose of this project. Why would the city of Vancouver want information that would quantify something insignificant? Would it not be better to supply them with a vision of the future? These are the initial questions we should have elaborated on, if we had created a pre-mortem in advance during the first three weeks of our design progress (Harford, 2015). Our initial objective was decided based more upon its feasibility rather than utility, being too afraid of failure, we opted for more attainable project. This comment also tested our groups flexibility. To utilize his suggestion we had to be open to momentary change and be decisive with our next actions. The final proposal was due in only two days. Work had to be redone starting from the goal of the project and onwards. Our team had to quickly brainstorm these ideas and delegate how this revision would be accomplished in such a short time frame.

At first, we felt defeated. We did not want to fail, and we were enthusiastic about finding a feasible project and rolling with it. We agreed we should have communicated more, we needed to own up to our mistakes and take this negative experience as a learning experience.

So what?

We are now on a new trajectory…for the time being. This experience became a lesson, how communication is foundation of any group project. While we all shared the same ultimate goal of succeeding in our Food Production and Resiliency project, we found the commonality of our shortcomings. We all speak English but reciprocate and appreciate different forms of communication and support.

Some members entered this project with more experience than others, thus our communication was doomed from the beginning. We had too many expectations but did elaborate what those expectations were. We aren’t First Years anymore, but that didn’t mean we all completely understood the level of work we wanted from each other. The lack of communication among us proved in our incohesive work, and the passive aggressiveness took its’ tole on our cooperation skills later. We based our actions off the unresponsiveness of others when we should have acknowledged our issues. We all had different expectations of each other, and while we failed to be straightforward in the beginning, in fear of hurting each other’s feelings or being too prideful to explain our own feelings, we are learning now.

We are aware that a curve ball could still thrown at any moment and after seeing the revisions to our submitted proposal, there may still be potential for change and growth. It’s all a work in progress and it’s a learning process we are still adjusting ourselves to as a team. However, having our first turn into uncertainty out of the way, we are more prepared on how to take these curve balls and adapt to change. Our greatest mishap was the direction of our project, yet with active communication as team and the advice of Will Valley and Colin Dring, we came to a consensus. Finally, we were able to flesh out efficient methodologies by clarifying exact tools and actions that would allow us to achieve our objectives. By doing so, we were able to eliminate vague processes and with our time we were able to go over analysis which we will reflect upon. From data collected, we will be able to gather and draw conclusions and finally propose multiple directions that our data could be used in the future to other studies, as well as our own.

Now What?

The setback caused a great deal of concern amongst group members, as we scrambled to define new terms and find different stakeholders for our project before the proposal’s short due date. We struggled, yet we reflected upon previous issues that had led to our initial downfall, and discussed our issues in a safe and respectful place. We acknowledged our poor communication skills and accepted that it ultimately led to our uncooperativeness and incohesiveness. We agreed that to be successful, we needed to be tolerable and clear with our expectations and say what’s on our minds. Vocal members in the group began listening more and quieter members became more vocal when we reminded ourselves of the consequences if we once again failed to communicate and be receptive: wasted time.

As with Keith Jarrett’s electrifying performance at the Cologne opera house (Harford, 2015), we all agreed the updated proposal was a success thanks to the circumstances beyond our control. We were forced beyond our comfort, with less than five days to redo a whole proposal report, we needed to communicate efficiently, without worry of offending each other (like we had originally tried to do). We spoke objectively putting egos aside and following directions of whoever seemed most understanding of Professor Will Valley’s advice. We learned to respectfully tolerate each other’s mistakes. We learned to take action efficiently. During this whole process, we utilized Freakonomics’ podcast, seeing failure as our friend (Cohn, 2015), which empowered us to take a step back from our over-confidence and difficulties by creating a pre-mortem.

We designed a pre-mortem to determine everything that could go wrong during stages of our project. By creating a pre-mortem, we were able to determine probable issues we would encounter this time around with our updated proposal at various stages of the project. Therefore, this allowed us to reduce our over-confidence before the project began and increased the participation of everyone in the group who may have (Cohn, 2015).

Achievements and Improvements: the things we gained

The aftermath of this ordeal taught us how invested we have become in this project, so much that sometimes when we are misunderstood and expectation are not fulfilled we get upset with one another. Through the hardship and pain, especially in editing and condensing of our project’s proposal, we learned to understand each other better. We learned that if our project did not make sense to us, then it would not make sense to our readers (Bradley & Herrera, 2016).

As aforementioned, with our busy timetables, we needed to to further improve our communication in order for everyone to feel comfortable sharing their personal perspectives with our pre-mortem strategies (Harford, 2015). Optimistically speaking, our team has become closer, as proof by our succinct proposal paper. We look forward to executing our proposal, putting our egos aside and communicating more clearly, in a more efficient manner with humble minds and loving hearts (Bradley & Herrera, 2016).

In collaborative projects such as these, we have gained experiences from engaging and having active and efficient group meetings. We have learned to generate concrete plans and strategize upcoming involvement with our stakeholders, who are from New York, Montreal, London and Vancouver. We have also learned how to collect and analyze data which will help generate a better model to improve Vancouver’s food resiliency.

As individuals, we have further developed our leadership, taking ownership of our team’s values and execution of our plan in an efficient manner through time management and leadership skills. We have come to understand and communicate with each other actively, gathering different opinions which has ultimately become the most effective communication skill. With humility and respectful, we have also learned to support each other.

In the future, we continue to hone our skills and continue becoming more tolerant and patient listeners when dealing with our communities stakeholders, as well as our team member’s needs and differences. In hope of helping and executing our plan tactically, and eventually generate a better and uniform food production model to help improve Vancouver’s resilience.

References

Bradley, K., & Herrera, H. (2016). Decolonizing food justice: Naming, resisting, and researching colonizing forces in the movement: Decolonizing food justice. Antipode, 48(1), 97-114. doi:10.1111/anti.12165

Cohn, Gretta. (2015, May 20). Failure Is Your Friend: A Freakonomics Radio Rebroadcast.

Podcast retrieved from: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/

Harford, Tim. [TED] (2015, September). How frustration can make us more creative. [Video file] Retrieved from:

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Valley, W. (2017). Session 1-Course Introductions:Choosing Your Project. Retrieved from: http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-1-term-1/#fragment-4d3bc8b75a6f34c952b55f54ea11724a-2