Moment of Significant – What     

           Looking back at the three months we spent working on our CBEL project, we have gained a lot of knowledge about free and subsidized grocery food assets in our community. In addition,  we learned to navigate and teach others how to use the Vancouver Asset Map. In the beginning, all of our group members were confused about what had to be done, the amount of time we had to commit, and whether or not we could rely on eachother. After attending the orientation session ran by our community partner, Teya Stephens (MSc, RD, Vancouver Coastal Health), we got a general overview of the Vancouver Asset Map. We were excited and motivated to communicate with our potential UBC community partners and survey UBC community members, because this will be an opportunity for us to get to know our community as well as to make a difference in raising awareness for food security in Vancouver.  

          However, there were also many uncertainties that we encountered while we were doing our CBEL project. A larger barrier was when we were trialling the map. We realized that we spent too much time trying to familiarize ourselves with this project, so there was a very short time for us to put everything into action.  Some of the potential community partners did not reply to us when we approached them. Therefore, we had to contact other partners and change or modify our plans accordingly. In total, we had about three to four weeks to conduct the surveys, trial the map and analyze the data we collected. Nonetheless, we still appreciated these uncertainties as the process challenged us to use our problem solving skills. As Shulman (2005) wrote in one of our reading materials, professional education is supposed to contribute to skilled professional practice, and our learning will be limited without a certain amount of anxiety or risk during the practice process.

Survey process:

Source: http://caroldussere.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/

Moment of Significant – So What

              As we continued working on this project, it became apparent to us that we weren’t making the same life-changing impacts on the society as we originally intended . The whole process of collecting data on assets and feedback on the map took longer than expected, leaving us little time for further development for the project. There were even cases where people that we contacted did not get back to us at all. It felt like everything moved very slowly, and we started to become more and more discouraged with little excitement left for the project.

             However, Will enlightened us during the lecture this week. His words of wisdom caught our attention. He spoke about his own experience in working on his projects: a good change is a slow change, and we must be patient. This resonated a lot with our group and established a lasting impression. We came into the project hoping that our work would make a huge difference in the battle against food insecurity. But in reality, we were given small tasks that seemed to minimally affect the problem. Will’s pep talk made us rethink our position. As a group, we began to appreciate the “small victories” that we won on this journey and to think more positively. Although we did not make as large of a difference as initially planned, we believe that we made a lasting impression on our community partners and those that we surveyed.

The results from survey:

Moment of Significant – Now What     

            Our group’s CBEL project is nearing its end, but the learning process will continue. We want to share our understanding and findings that we collected on the free or subsidized grocery food assets and the Vancouver Asset Map with our community members and community partners by presenting our infographic at the UBC Nest. We would also like to keep our positive attitude for future projects and appreciate every small victory that comes our way. In addition, the problem solving skills, team bonding skills, and communication skills that we learned from doing surveys and trialling the map will help us succeed in future academic and career pursuits.

            For future LFS 350 students and other students doing CBEL projects, we would advise them to not spend too much time waiting for instructions and gathering background information. Instead, we recommend them to be more proactive by planning ahead and leaving more time for the action tasks. Going through the practice process will help the students learn skills that they are not able to learn from lectures alone.

References

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

Objectives & Achievements

Week 7

• Collect information for free or subsidized groceries within UBC community by contacting potential community partners through email.
• Update and fill incomplete information in excel sheet that containing critical information for the Vancouver Food Asset Map

Week 8

• As a team, familiarize ourselves with the asset map by trialing and using it before starting the trailing process for the Food Asset Map.
• Do preparation for trailing of the Food Asset Map, which includes confirming a specific time during this week’s flexible learning session and confirming the collaboration with UBC community centers.

During week 7, we managed to complete our objectives. We are still waiting for more responses from community partners regarding their willingness to participate in the Vancouver Food Asset Map trial. We started calling them directly rather than waiting for them to email us back. However, out of the three community partners we have contacted, only the Old Barn Community Centre is willing to collaborate and trial the map with us. Originally in our proposal, we planned to conduct the trialling of the map on three locations on Main Mall, as this will will give us a large survey sample size. We have decided to postpone trialling the map because during Teya’s visit at our tutorial session, she mentioned that she wanted us to collaborate with multiple community centres at UBC for the trialling process. Given the current situation, we will need more time to approach community partners. Teya would also like to see the result from trialling the map in a community food event hosted by the community partner. Due to this change, Week 8 objectives needed to be postponed. We decided to continue updating the Excel sheets during our flexible learning time. We will keep contacting food assets to confirm that the information that we have are updated and whether or not they are willing to be included in the food asset map. We have been getting a lot of positive responses from food assets as most of them agreed to continue the collaboration with the Food Asset Map and the information is more complete than two weeks ago. There was an interesting discovery – we found that contacting the community partners through email was not an effective way to update information and ask for consent because most of them did not reply. To solve this problem, another round of phone calls were made, and the results were positive. We have confidence that by the upcoming week, we can finish updating the Food Asset Map.

Moment of Significant Change

The workshop this week provided us an opportunity to look back and reflect on our progress. In addition, it provided us insight of how our team dynamic had play out as the term went on. It helped us catch some potential problems that may come up and prevent it to allow for a graceful dismount later.

The first exercise was to graph each member’s knowledge and skills in the time span of this project. It highlighted the fact that although skills and knowledge can be correlated, they are not quite the same. As shown in Graph 1, the knowledge and skills that we acquired are positively correlated. When our knowledge about the project increased, our skills increased too. However, it never surpassed the knowledge base, we acquired since the skills are based off of what we know. At the beginning, we had little knowledge about the project, hence our skills, or how we approached the project was limited, but we became more informed as time went on. With the help from one of our community partner Teya and our TA, we started our project by contacting prospective community partners. We followed the contacting templates provided by Teya which improved our communication skills, signified by the rise in knowledge and rise of lines in graph 1. Due to individual variation and interpretation of knowledge and skill, some of us felt that we learned more than others, and therefore experienced a greater increase in knowledge than others. The fact that the green line experienced a larger increase in knowledge is because she did not have prior experience contacting others in a professional manner, whereas the blue line had some prior experience, minimizing the knowledge gap.

Next, we each graphed a timeline of our emotions and attitude. Graph 2 allowed us to have a mental check in with ourselves and with each other. We learned that even though we were experiencing the same situation and had the same ups and downs as a group, not everyone on the team was affected the same way. While most of us started in the “happy zone”, the fates of each individual vary drastically. For example, the blue line experienced a short increase of positive emotions followed by a steady decline in happiness as time went on. Whereas the red line experienced a rapid increase of positivity followed by a plateau in emotions, then a sharp decrease with an equally fast increase to a happy medium with a plateau. The general trend was that most of us experienced a gain in positive emotions in the beginning as we began to learn more about the project and get comfortable with each other. After that, we all experienced a downfall to some degree. Reasons for the downfall mainly included difficulties contacting community partners, lack of responses from food assets, being overwhelmed by assignments, as well as small things like the rainy days and cold weather.

The main take-away idea from this workshop was that the same physical situation, which in this case is the project, will have different effects on team members. Just because someone is very content with what is happening does not necessarily mean that the next person is happy as well. We should always make an effort as a team to understand each other and try to figure out what may be bothering someone or preventing them from gaining knowledge or skills. Continue doing so will make our group work smoother and prepare us for a graceful dismount.

Graceful Dismount

We have been doing a good job in communicating and sharing responsibilities so far, and it is important for us to keep the effective communication up in order to finish this project.

As mentioned above, we will continue to contact assets by phone if we haven’t heard from them through email, but we will be careful to respect their decisions and not pressure anyone into being part of the map. We will coordinate with our community partner, Old Barn Community Center, to conduct our trial in the next flexible learning session. We will make sure all group members are aware of how to use the map, and verse ourselves in the appropriate way to conduct the trial as specified by Teya.

Most importantly, we will not become discouraged if we don’t get the expected results. We will continue to get as much participation as possible and make sure the project is completed. It will be futile to be discouraged if assets do not wish to participate as this is out of our control. Additionally, while we hope to get as many people trialling the map as possible, we shall keep in mind that this is a voluntary process. Therefore we will make sure not to pressure anyone to participate, and keep our survey and the process ethical.

With respect to our final report, we plan to take into consideration the feedback we have received on our project proposal, as this constitutes a main part of our report. By making the appropriate corrections we can make sure that our final report is informative, sequential, and succinct.

Future weekly objectives

Week 10 (Nov. 7th-10th)

• Continue updating the excel sheet for the Food Asset Map for free or subsidized grocery programs.
• Coordinate logistics of map trialling with Old Barn Community Centre.

Week 11 (Nov. 14th-18th)

• Collect qualitative data in tabular form (Excel).
• Generate infographics based on our data presented.
• Start surveying process for the Vancouver Asset Map.
• Analyze data obtained and present data to our Community Partner (Teya Stephens).

Week 12 (Nov. 21st-25th)

• Prepare slides for the final presentation
• Begin writing the final report.

Week 13 (Nov. 28th-Dec. 2nd)

• Present our project, Free & Subsidized Grocery Items, to the UBC community (Nov. 30th)
• Finish writing the final group report.

THE TEAM

Lidwina Christanya Amanda Sari

3rd year, Nutritional Science

I have profound interest in the relationship between human psychological state with their tendency to make better food choices. I am very excited to do map trialling and meet different community members and study how the two variables might correlate with each other based on their household experiences.

Yin Lam (Belva) Wong

3rd Year, Food, Nutrition and Health

What can I do as a food lover? Being an international student with a duty to reduce money spent as money is a huge pressure for my family. At the same time, I love food and want to have a cheap but balanced diet. Therefore, this project is one of the best learning experience that I could gain in order to further discuss and research upon this issue.

Iris Lopez Ramirez

3rd year, Food, Nutrition and Health

I love food and appreciate the intricacy of people’s relationship with it; be it social, cultural, or personal. I enjoy giving back to my community through volunteering, specially in community kitchens that help those with food insecurities. I am excited to participate in the food mapping initiative as this is a great way to help our community.

Lisa Zheng

4th year, Food, Nutrition and Health

Breathing and eating multiple times a day are activities many of us do daily. However, even in a large developed area like Vancouver where grocery stores, restaurants, fast food chains are readily accessible, there are still people that don’t have  access to a stable food source. I am excited to participate in this community project as I can help make a difference and spread awareness about the available food assets around the community.

Mitchie Zhao

3rd year, Food Science

I am passionate about food microbiology, especially the modification of microorganisms in food industry. Vancouver Asset Map project provides me an opportunity to think about food safety and food security from a social perspective instead of just learning from textbooks and labs.

Queena Chung

3rd year, Nutritional Science

As an avid eater and sleeper, I am quite the couch potato. Nevertheless, I enjoy the adrenaline that comes with extreme sports, as well as travelling and exploring different cultures. I am particularly interested in human nutrition on the international scale and also from a social aspect.

VISION, MISSION, GOALS

We, as a team, realized that achieving food security is not an easy job. One can eat three meals a day and be very full but still be food insecure due to the lack of nutritional quality of the food. This is the main reason why we chose the project, as food asset maps can be a very important community asset in addressing food insecurity. Through building food asset maps, we are hoping to make food resources more accessible to both the vulnerable and non-vulnerable individuals living in different parts of the community. With a more expansive reach, we believe that this project has the potential to create a greater ripple effect and reach out to a greater, more diverse public.

Our mission includes improving the asset map so that it can be presented to the target users in a detailed yet easy-to-navigate manner. Assets are all around us in the Vancouver area. Unfortunately, not all of these assets are used to their full potential as the targeted population do not know of their existence. We believe that if everyone is able to access the needed resources efficiently, the amount of struggle associated with food insecurity and the potential wasting of a valuable resource tool would be dramatically reduced.

We hope that the knowledge gained from LFS 350 will help us transition into more mindful community members. By the end of the course, we wish to develop skills in setting SMART goals that match what our community partners want. Moreover, we aspire to further develop our communication skills in order to continue making good community partnerships in the future. We expect to integrate what we learn from the community to a bigger picture of food systems. Ultimately, we want to become more active community members and become more aware of issues in food insecurity.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The Vancouver Food Asset Map is a collaboration project between Vancouver Coastal Health Public Dietitians with different community partners to provide a mapping tool for community members and agencies in locating different foot assets, especially one that is current and easily accessible. By supporting food access and aid in dealing with food insecurities, this project will hopefully support the different layers of the community (Teya & Kathy, 2016). As a team, we will be working closely with Vancouver Coastal Health under the supervision of Teya Stephens, R.D., to collect data of free or subsidized grocery food assets across Vancouver (Teya & Kathy, 2016). Another portion of this project will be contributed to help people from the community who are unfamiliar with the map to know the map and give them instruction of how to use the map (Teya, 2016). Furthermore, in this project we are going to gather feedback from the community members on the usability of the map, so they can continuously improve the map and close gaps in the food asset map, making it more comprehensive, up to date and user-friendly(Teya & Kathy, 2016).  

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: PROCESS TO DATE

Putting the first impressions into consideration, we believe that the most important principle is to respect the local people. As Ernesto Sirolli(2012) said in the video, “Want to Help Someone? Shut up and Listen.” This demonstrates that if we want to do community projects and help local people, we should first listen and get to know them rather than simply imposing our ideas onto them. We make an effort form connections with community members because local people, instead of external experts, are the center of the community development, and each person contributes to the community (referring to the principles of Asset-Based Community Development(Mathie & Cunningham,2003).Therefore, the acknowledgement of social, historical background, and population composition of the community chosen for the food asset map is significant for us to analyze food justice(Allen, 2008). Most importantly, always be aware of the cultural and educational backgrounds of community members when we try to communicate with them, especially when we try to help build community support for those who have trouble with getting food.

References:

Allen, P. (2008). Mining for justice in the food system: perceptions, practices, and possibilities. Agriculture and Human Values, 25(2), 157–161.

Ernesto Sirolli (2012, November 26) Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! Retrived from https://youtu.be/chXsLtHqfdM

LFS 350- Vancouver Food Asset Map [ Powerpoint] Evergreen Community Health Centre;  Teya,S.,& Kathy,R,. (2016, September 21).

Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G. (2003). From clients to citizens: Asset-based Community Development as a strategy for community-driven development. Development in Practice, 13(5), 474–486.

Vancouver Food Asset Map Draft LFS 350- Trainer Guide.[Word] Vancouver Coastal health and Public Health Program; Teya,S. (2016, September).