BLOG POST #2

Greetings from Group 17! We have just passed one of the important stops in our journey of assessing comunity kitchens, which is completing the proposal. The next step is to contact with community kitchens and do surveys about the condition. Are you ready for more new information about kitchens in Killarney? Don’t forget to follow us on our blog!

Weekly Objectives and Achievements

Week 1

(Jan 4-8)

Objectives:

  •  Meet with the group mates and decide which community project to work on.
Achievements:

  • Introduction of each group members and shared his/her interest. By looking at the group’s interest, we picked our top 3 from the list of the community projects.
  • Created a Messenger group as our main form of communication.

Week 2

(Jan  11-15)

Objectives:

  • Our group was assigned to work on Killarney community kitchens.
  • Search and create a list of community kitchens in Killarney neighborhood.
  • Create an outline for Blog Post #1
Achievements:

  • Created a systems diagram for Killarney community.
  • Worked on the Blog Post #1
  • Learned about the key principles of asset-based community development (ABCD) approach and how to engage with the community in a professional manner.

Week 3

(Jan 18-22)

Objectives:

  • Work on Blog Post #1
  • Search and contact for community kitchens in Killarney.
Achievements:

  • Finished blog post #1
  • Started contacting some facilities in Killarney and asked if they have a community kitchen

Week 4

(Jan 25-29)

Objectives:

  • Split the project proposal into sections and decide who is doing what part.
  • Create a Google document to work on the proposal draft
  • Make a deadline for our proposal draft (Friday of this week).
Achievements:

  • Learned about the importance of project proposal in the development of community food security project
  • Finished the draft of our project proposal

Week 5

(Feb 1-5)

Objectives:

  • Finish the final project proposal.
  • Submit the Tutorial Course on Research Ethics
  • Contact more community kitchens within Killarney neighborhood
  • Start on blog post #2
Achievements:

  • Submitted the final project proposal and the Tutorial Course on Research Ethics
  • Created a Google document for blog post #2 so that every group member can work on it

Week 6

(Feb 8-12)

Objectives:

  • Finish blog post #2
  • Revise the submitted final project proposal before putting it up on the blog
  • Follow up with our community partner
Achievements:

  • Our group further worked on the final proposal before it was shown publicly.
  • Finished blog post #2

 

Assessment of Killarney Neighbourhood Community Kitchens Proposal:

CommunityKitchenProposal

 

Moment of Significance: 

After completing our proposal, the next step was approaching community partners. The ideal outcome for this step was to collect data. In approaching this next step, we came across some obstacles. The most significant being a difficulty in locating community kitchens in the neighbourhood of our interest. Our initial thought was to search for kitchen organizers on Google and Yellow Pages. Unfortunately, we found that the majority of community kitchens in Killarney are organized by The City of Vancouver. In an attempt not only rely on the internet, we called some churches in Killarney to inquire whether or not they knew of any private kitchens. We were unsuccesful in gaining information from them. We also emailed some partners to introduce our project, and to invite them to participate. Thankfully, one of the partners who we contacted did reply. Unfortunately, she does not have a kitchen, but she did share some contacts of hers in the hope that they may have kitchens. The next steps will include getting in touch with other community partners, hopefully using our new contacts as well as visiting the neighbourhood. We had similar research experiences as this project, which was studying local food systems of different schools in East Vancouver. Vancouver School Board was the partner of Think & Eat Green @ School program. Benefiting from the partnership, we were assigned to a school to study. So it was easy to contact with schools and assess the condition of school food systems. What we learnt from the problems of approaching kitchens was not to rely on the partnership but try to access kitchens in different ways, for example, going to the community in person.

 

Upcoming Objectives:
The upcoming objectives for our group are to find community kitchens located in the Killarney area and begin to introduce them to the project for participation. The first strategy is to connect with the Vancouver Food Bank Society as a main source for community kitchen networks. They hold workshops for leadership of community kitchens so they may be able to connect us with members in attendence from the Killarney Area. If there is no connections we can make that way, the next strategy will be to contact the churches, YMCA, and community buildings to see if any spaces are rented out during the week from their facilities for community kitchens. If there are still no responses we will have to regroup and decide the next course of action. If we are successful then we will make meeting times with each canditate and conduct the survey. Once surveys are finished, the next objective is to summarize the data and start analysis.