BLOG 4
What:
The community-based learning project conducted by our group was done at the Nest at UBC, where we introduced the Vancouver Food Asset Map to the students and interviewed them for their inputs and opinions about the map. The goal of this project was to review the current food assets map, and then build on it by adding new food assets to the map. The questions to be addressed during our data collection included what changes were needed, if the map was easy to follow, and that weather or not they will use the map in the future. The findings from this project will then be taken into account to help improving the Vancouver Food Asset Map with regards to the UBC and its endowment lands.
So what:
The community visits and our survey imply that many of us inside the UBC community are not familiar with the food assets around us even when it’s so close to our life. Many of the students or faculty member we interviewed didn’t aware of the existence of the AMS food bank. When we were doing our survey we thought maybe some of the people we reach will be aware of the food assets but it turns out most of them never thought about it. We wish we could acknowledge the public more about the importance of food assets around school.While we let the people tested out the food asset map we notice a lot people do not have a laptop handy around them, so if we can let them test out the use of map on their phone will be more efficient and useful for the public.I think the food asset map is easy to use however, public usually reach out for more well known and familiar approach such as google map or yelp.
Now what:
There were a few things which we may have tried different approaches to have a better outcome. First, when writing the introduction for our proposal, we didn’t notice that downtown campus was also included when we discussed population living and eating on UBC campus. It made us miss a few informations when we were doing our research about food insecurity and writing our proposal. We would have read through the instruction more detailed, and engage with community partners more often. Also, when we were contacting food assets, mostly we chose to contact them through phone or emails. If we would do this again, we should definitely try physically visits, which may work better for us to gain information, ask questions, and know those assets into more details.
Although our project was not done perfectly, sometimes mistakes and unexpected mess are what can really inspire our creativity, thus we could think more and learn more from them (Harford, 2016). Overall, our group really enjoyed doing this project and worked with the community partners. We did learn a lot from it. Looking forward, we will mainly focus on the presentation showcase and final report.
References
Harford, T.(2016). Tim Harford How Messy Problems Can Inspire Creativity. (Video file). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/aLoXx8qnb14