Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub

Hello! This is our 4^th and final blog posting for LFS 350. After these past three months since our project began, we can finally say that we have reached the summit of our project. We have immensely enjoyed this journey, from interacting with our community partner Joanne to engaging with the Little Mountain Riley Park (LMRP) community members.

As we move into the final weeks of the course our project is drawing to a close. Our last item to tackle is our final project report. In this blog post we have included the executive summary from our project report, which we hope gives you some idea of the conclusions we have come to from analyzing our data. We hope that these conclusions may be used to optimize community member access to the LMRP garden (plan pictured below).

Figure 1: LMRP Garden Plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This project was carried out by a group of five students enrolled in LFS350 in conjunction with the Little Mountain Riley Park (LMRP) Neighbourhood Food Network (NFN). NFNs in Vancouver are a component of the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, with the goal of ensuring equitable access to health local food, thereby promoting food security (City of Vancouver, 2012). The LMRPNFN is acquiring space in the Fall of 2016 to build an accessible and inclusive community garden (CG) in the LMRP area (Joanne MacKinnon, personal communication, 2016). As the LMRP area is socioeconomically and ethnically diverse, special considerations must be taken to ensure that residents are able to access the garden’s services to the best of their ability (City of Vancouver, 2011; Joanne MacKinnon, personal communication, 2016). The goal of this project was to identify demographic specific barriers to participation in the LMRPCG in order to ensure equitable access to garden services by LMRP community members.

The main objectives of this project were to design, distribute, and analyze data from a survey completed by community members identified as part of populations of particular interest by our community partner, Joanne MacKinnon. These populations included elderly, newcomer, and low-income groups. We utilized a mixed methods approach for this survey, collecting quantitative data through our nine-item survey and qualitative through both speaking with community members and providing some open-ended response questions within the survey. The questions that our survey was answering were as follows:

1. What programs based at the community garden would be most beneficial for the elderly, newcomers and low-income populations?
2. What potential barriers do the elderly, newcomers and low-income populations of LMRP anticipate to their participations in the community garden?

From analyzing our survey data, community members were most interested in the socialization and learning aspects of the garden, with a notable lack of interest in gardening itself. In terms of demographic specific barriers to participation, language and lack of free time were the most frequently reported. In consideration of our project findings, we suggest the following:

1. Continue to focus on the socialization aspect of the garden.
2. Provide garden services in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish where possible.
3. Keep garden activities and services low or no-cost.
4. Offer a shuttle service to and from the garden for participants with accessibility issues.

We hope that our data and suggestions may be used by the LMRPNFN to allow the increased participation of key populations in the LMRP area.

REFLECTION

Throughout the semester, we encountered many roadblocks during our project’s development. Our first major roadblock was the negative feedback we received on our proposal – as students, we found that it was difficult to separate the feedback meant to better our project development from the negative feelings we associated with the grade itself. However, this roadblock allowed us to, as Steven Levitt called, it “fail quicker” (Freakonomics, 2015). With the feedback we received on what we felt was a failure, we were able to move forward with confidence after improving the quality of our report. Our revised project proposal better addressed the “What, How, and Why” of our project, so that our community partner could more fully assess the value and content of our project’s intended trajectory (Valley, 2016a).

Our second major roadblock occurred when we had a scope shift due to feedback from our community partner. Originally, we proposed the creation of workshop selection criteria. These criteria were meant to account for budget, seasonality, utilization, and community needs to optimize workshop selection for the LMRPCG. However, upon reflection it is clear that this project did not put the community members at the forefront of our project development. Based on feedback from our community partner and the LFS 350 teaching team, we collaborated to design a survey that focused on the needs of the key populations mentioned above. By approaching this project with an asset-based community development lens, we were able to interact with the community members and use their knowledge of what they want and needed (Valley, 2016b). This is in stark contrast to our original needs-based approach, where we were coming in as external academics and telling the garden organizers and community members what we thought they needed.

As our project draws to a close, we hope that the data that our project has provided can be a valuable tool for the garden organizers to continue to promote food security. While we have felt confused and lost at points during this project, we ultimately are very glad that we chose this project. It was a pleasure working with Joanne and the LMRP community members. Working directly with community members on the LMRPCG intended to improve community food security has cemented our knowledge surrounding the course goals of LFS 350.

On behalf of the LFS 350 Group 2 team, we would like to say thank you to Joanne MacKinnon and the LMRPCG organizers for this opportunity to work with them.

References

City of Vancouver. (2012). Greenest City 2020 Action Plan. Retrieved from http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Greenest-city-action-plan.pdf

City of Vancouver. (2011). Census Local Area Profiles 2011. Retrieved from http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/censusLocalAreaProfiles2011.htm

Freakonomics. (2015). Failure is Your Friend: A Freakonomics Radio Rebroadcast. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/

Valley, W. (2016a). Session 4 – Crafting a Proposal (Required Readings + Resources). Retrieved from http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-4/

Valley, W. (2016b). Session 2 – Community Food Security + Asset-Based Community Development (Required Readings + Resources). Retrieved from http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-2/

“If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm” – Frank Lane, n.d.

Figure 1: Untitled online image of a rainbow. (Long, 2015).

Welcome to our third group blog posting! As we move into the 10^th week of LFS350, we are starting to see the light at the end of the project. We have put a lot of effort into growing a project that we hope will be beneficial to our community partner Joanne, community members of the Little Mountain Riley Park (LMRP) area, as well as our own personal development. Our scope has shifted significantly since our last blog post, requiring us to refocus our efforts. While this has at times caused us to feel pressured for time and resources, we now feel confident that we are moving in the right direction. The following quote from the novella The Little Prince has stood out to us in the past couple of weeks:

 “It is the time you spend on your rose that makes your rose so important.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

We are looking forward to seeing how important our rose will be!

Weekly Objectives

You may remember from previous posts that our project was going to focus on designing an education package for the LMRP community garden. However, we are now looking at identifying barriers to community garden participation for those living in the LMRP area. In the coming weeks, we will be working on collecting and synthesizing data obtained from community members through a short survey. We will then synthesize this data in order to draft our final presentation and project.

March 7^th – 11^th

This past week our objective was to finish collecting data from the key events identified by Joanne. In order to facilitate the collection of qualitative data in addition to the quantitative data from the surveys, we had two groups members attend most events. This allowed us to collect more responses while still having time to speak with community members who had thoughts to share with us beyond what was in the survey.

March 14^th – 18^th

 Our objective for this week will be to finish entering all of the quantitative survey responses into our survey template created with Fluid Surveys. We will use Fluid Surveys to identify survey response patterns, which we will then synthesize with any qualitative data to identify overarching themes in community member responses (see March 21^st – 25^th). We will create separate survey templates for both community and non-community members, as instructed by Joanne.

March 21^st – 25^th

Our objective will be to use inductive reasoning skills to identify themes in the analyzed data. Once we have identified themes and have a concrete idea of how our data responses will look, we will begin working on how it should be presented. At this point, it seems that the best option will be to use a mix of tables and direct quotes, as used by Miewald and Ostry in their paper “A warm meal and a bed: intersections of housing and food security in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside” (2014). As some participants had a significant amount of verbal responses for us, this will allow us to present our quantitative survey data as well as the extremely valuable qualitative responses.

March 28^th – April 1^st

Our objective for this week will be due have an outline for our report done fairly early in the week. This will allow us to have a sense of how our final project report will look, which will facilitate ease in creation of our final presentation due on April 1^st.

Achievements

After several hurdles in finding the scope of our project, it feels like we are finally on the right track. We have had project achievements that have boosted our group’s morale, leaving us feeling confident going into the final weeks of this project.

What?

We were able to complete our survey ballot. The previous weeks were spent creating a survey that was comprehensive but not difficult for community members to complete.

So what?

This required many revisions at the urge of various group members, Joanne, and Latika (our TA). At times we felt uncertain of the direction of our project due to the numerous revisions.

Now what?

Drafting a survey that was both accessible and useful has made us feel much more confident in our project direction. We feel much more ready to move forward than we previously did.

What?

Over the last week, we have attended key events in the LMRP area. This was our first opportunity to interact with the community members.

So what?

Unanimously, our group felt that attending these events made the project feel much more “real” than it previously did during our scope change. The people involved in these events were proud to be involved, and their enthusiasm regarding the community garden made us feel very happy. Prior to analyzing any data, it seems that any events in the community garden will be received well by the people attending these events.

Now what?

Visualizing a successful garden was humbling and has become a huge motivator for us to finish this project strong.

Moment of Significance

Figure 2. Moment of significance

Overall, our team has had similar feelings over the past nine weeks. As can be seen in the figure, our group had relatively low levels of uncertainty until around weeks four and five. This was when we experienced our moment of significance.

What?

First, we received more negative feedback on our project proposal than we had anticipated. In addition, we also met with Joanne who wanted us to shift the scope of our project as she was unhappy with where it was headed.

So what? 

The compounded stress from these moments of significance left us feeling confused and uncertain if we would even be able to finish our project in time.

Now what?

As we have moved on from this scope shift, we have found it necessary to remain flexible and supportive of other team members. However, this also includes setting firm deadlines for project goals, and asking for help when we need it. This uncertainty we now recognize is not inherently harmful to our goals; as Shulman noted, these uncertainties will continue to follow us from our academic careers into our professional ones (2005). Furthermore, this project scope change is perfectly normal, and our initial fright at no longer having a project proposal that is relevant was anticipated by the teaching team (Jovel & Valley, 2016).

The Graceful Dismount

As we are rapidly approaching the deadline for project completion, it has been necessary to consider the note we would like to end on. As can be seen in Figure 2, our group decided that the general endpoint we all hope for would be one in which we have accomplished what we understand as the project’s goals. As there has been high uncertainty within our team throughout this project, we would also like to be at a place where we feel a low sense of uncertainty.

In terms of strategies for reaching this endpoint, we will be finishing collecting survey responses on March 14^th. This will allow us enough time to present our collected data will in our final project report. We hope that the final report will be sufficiently in-depth so as to allow increased community member engagement once the community garden is built.

References

De Saint-Exupéry, A. (1943). The little prince. New York, NY: Reynal & Hitchcock.

Jovel, E., & Valley, W. (2016). Session 9 – Approaches to Inquiry, Pt 2 + Managing Scope Change [online lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-9/

Long, J. (2015). [Untitled online image of a rainbow]. Retrieved March 9, 2016 from http://jimmylong.net/2015/06/27/dont-fear-the-rainbow/

Miewald, C., & Ostry, A. (2014). A Warm Meal and a Bed: Intersections of Housing and Food Security in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Housing Studies, 29(6), 709–729. DOI:10.1080/02673037.2014.920769

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

“A Little Rain Never Hurt Noone”-Tom Waits

http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-6671882-stock-footage-garden-alley-on-a-rainy-day.html

Welcome back to our blog site! We have been working away on our project for the Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub and recently finished our proposal report. We have had a few “rainy days” on the project front but are starting to see a break in the clouds!

Weekly Objectives

As a recap, in the previous weeks we focused on meeting with our community partner and drafting our project proposal. In the following three weeks, our objectives are as follows

February 15th-19th: We will develop a set of criteria to choose the workshops that we incorporate into our workshop package. Thus far we are not sure of what criteria to focus on. We plan on meeting with our community partner to gain more insight on the criteria she believes would be most beneficial for the target population. Furthermore these criteria will be developed through

1) a review of workshops that are available throughout areas with similar climate to Vancouver

2) Focus on criteria that will include and engage the target audience of the Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub (newcomers, elderly and those with fixed incomes). Thus far cost, accessibility and language are assumed to be target criteria.

3) Criteria that have been found to be beneficial to successful community gardens through a literature review.

February 22nd-26th: Our plan for this week is to validate our criteria and begin choosing workshops using our criteria.

In order to validate our choices of criteria we plan on contacting key community members that are involved with the target populations. Our community contact, Joanne McKinnon, has provided us with a list of programs throughout the community that focus on these populations. We plan on contacting key members that run these organizations and interviewing them. We want their feedback to ensure these target populations are the focus of the workshops.

February 29th-March 4th: In this week, we will continue to search and choose workshops. We will also use this time to begin drafting a design for our package; while we could start this now, we believe that it is necessary to have some idea of the workshops we are selecting to make the layout and usability of the package as good as possible.

Achievements

Our main achievement thus far was the completion of the our project proposal draft. Working through the aim and objects have helped narrow the scope of this project. It helped our group members connect to one another as well. We now understand how to better incorporate each other’s’ strength in assignments and support our individual goals for the project. We reflected on the feedback from our proposal. This allows us to be more efficient, and it keeps the group morale up during difficult steps in the process.

Moment of Significance

What? The selection of workshops was initially going to be chosen by our group. However, after speaking with Will Valley and key stakeholders in the community it became clear that a set of criteria should be used to determine which workshops to select. This put a kink in our plans and required us to be more creative and to find a way to form the criteria,according to Tim Hardford this is just where we want to be (2016).  

So What? Workshops should not be chosen solely on the preferences of our group mates. We we do not have the experience, nor are we a representation of the Little-Mountain Riley Park community. In order to present the most viable education plan possible we must involve key stakeholders in both the design and evaluation of our criteria. Realizing this is how we will apply the Asset-Based Community Development method was profound because it means we have established the foundation. By doing so, it creates an opportunity for the goals of all to be understood and synthesized into one cohesive set of criteria. This method will allow for the diversity of participants and interests to be addressed in our education package (McCullum et al, 2010). 

Now What? As a group we have chosen to base our decisions on a set of criteria we develop based on workshops that have worked in areas, climates and with target audiences similar to the Food Hub. Hopefully this messy problem will help our group further our problem solving abilities and allow us to provide an even better project than originally planned (Hardford, 2016).  We will need to have criteria present in order for workshops to be chosen that are inclusive of the community as well as workshops that promote food literacy in the community.

Upcoming Objectives

• Communicate with community members to develop set of criteria to choose workshops.
• Contact other community gardens in Vancouver and ask what workshops they are using and offering and which are the most popular.
• Run workshop ideas by Joanne to ensure both parties are happy with where the project is heading

Upcoming strategies

• Email community members with set of questions to narrow criteria down and include section for any additional comments about the type of workshops that will be offered.
• Meet with Joanne again to become clear with the aim of the project. After sending the proposal to Joanne it became clear that there was a disconnect between what Joanne wanted and what we perceived that she wanted. We believe another meeting should clear up any confusion about the project aim we are having. During the meeting we will try to reiterate our understanding of the project back to Joanne to ensure that both parties are on the same page.
  • This failure of communication can be a learning experience for our group (Freakanomics, 2015). The Failure is your Friend podcast reiterated to our group that even though there was a failure (the disconnect between our community partner and our group) we can refocus the projects goals and ensure we are not putting work into a project that will not be valued by the community. Even though it may be frustrating and turn into a failure it opens the doors for a better dialogue and communication approach between us and our community partner, which can only strengthen the final project. 

References

• Freakanomics (Gretta Cohn). (2015, May 20). Failure is your Friend. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/
• Harford, T (2016,January). Tim Harford: How frustration can make us more creative. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford_how_messy_problems_can_inspire_creativity?language=en
• McCullum, C., Desjardins, E., Kraak, V. I., Ladipo, P., & Costello, H. (2005). Evidence-based strategies to build community food security. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 105(2), 278–283.

Welcome back to our blog site!

We have been working away on our project for the Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub and recently finished our proposal report.

Weekly Objectives

As a recap, in the previous weeks we focused on meeting with our community partner and drafting our project proposal. In the following three weeks, our objectives are as follows:

• February 15th-19th: We will develop a set of criteria to choose the workshops that we incorporate into our workshop package. These criteria will be developed through 1) a review of workshops that are available and climate appropriate; 2) engaging with our community partner regarding what workshops would be most viable and needed for the Food Hub; and 3) bringing our criteria to the community partner and inquiring if she believes them to be sufficient
• February 22nd-26th: Our plan for this week is to begin choosing workshops using our criteria.
• February 29th-March 4th: In this week, we will continue to search and choose workshops. We will also use this time to begin drafting a design for our package; while we could start this now, we believe that it is necessary to have some idea of the workshops we are selecting to make the layout and usability of the package as good as possible.

Achievements

Our main achievement thus far was the completion of the our project proposal draft. Working through the aim and objects have helped narrow the scope of this project. It helped our group members connect to one another as well. We now understand how to better incorporate each other’s’ strength in assignments and support our individual goals for the project. We reflected on the feedback from our proposal. This allows us to be more efficient, and it keeps the group morale up during difficult steps in the process.

Moment of Significance

What? The selection of workshops was initially going to be chosen by our group. However, after speaking with Will Valley and key stakeholders in the community it became clear that a set of criteria should be used to determine which workshops to select.

So What? Workshops should not be chosen solely on the preferences of our group mates. We we do not have the experience, nor are we a representation of the Little-Mountain Riley Park community. In order to present the most viable education plan possible we must involve key stakeholders in both the design and evaluation of our criteria. Realizing this is how we will apply the Asset-Based Community Development method was profound because it means we have established the foundation. By doing so, it creates an opportunity for the goals of all to be understood and synthesized into one cohesive set of criteria. This method will allow for the diversity of participants and interests to be addressed in our education package (McCullum et al, 2010).

Now What? As a group we have chosen to base our decisions on a set of criteria we develop based on workshops that have worked in areas and climates similar to Vancouver and workshops that the community key stakeholders identify as valuable. We will need to have criteria present in order for workshops to be chosen that are inclusive of the community as well as workshops that promote food literacy in the community.

Upcoming Objectives

• Communicate with community members to develop set of criteria to choose workshops.
• Contact other community gardens in Vancouver and ask what workshops they are using and offering.
• Run workshop ideas by Joanne to ensure both parties are happy with where the project is heading

Upcoming strategies

• Email community members with set of questions to narrow criteria down and include section for any additional comments about the type of workshops that will be offered.
• Meet with Joanne again to become clear with the aim of the project. After sending the proposal to Joanne it became clear that there was a disconnect between what Joanne wanted and what we perceived that she wanted. We believe another meeting should clear up any confusion about the project aim we are having. During the meeting we will try to reiterate our understanding of the project back to Joanne to ensure that both parties are on the same page.

References

• McCullum, C., Desjardins, E., Kraak, V. I., Ladipo, P., & Costello, H. (2005). Evidence-based strategies to build community food security. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 105(2), 278–283.

Group 2: Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub

Theme: Seedlings

Growing more than vegetables

(http://foodmatterschilliwack.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/seedling.jpg)

Welcome to our first team blog post! We are a group of like-minded yet diverse students sharing a mutual interest in food, cooking, and community engagement. This project is only starting, but we feel each individual has brought a unique perspective to the team that creates a synergistic value. 

Our Team

Jenny Qi: I am a 4th year Food Science student with a passion to bridge food and sustainability. I believe connection can be created through social sustainability by connecting people to their food and community. This project is a seeding ground for community engagement and I can’t wait to see how it grows.

Tamara Ritchie: I am in my final year of the Food and Nutrition double major. I love all science aspects of food and I think the growing conditions of the garden and the seasonal produce options will be exciting to work with. Having the knowledge of what you can grow throughout the year is a great skill to have. I am excited to gain experience in food production and processing based on produce produced by a community garden. 

Alexa Tucker: I am a third year student majoring in Food, Nutrition, and Health. Over the past couple years I have discovered my love of creating educational materials for people to engage them in topics relating to food, nutrition, and sustainability, so I am really excited about the workshop component of this project. I believe that positive approaches to food education – like the food hub – are critical components for developing a healthier population.

Madelaine Anderson: I am in my third year of Applied Biology Food and Environment major. I am very interested in sustainable methods of producing food, especially at the community scale. Having a strong sense of community is important for the social aspects of sustainability and a community garden is a great way to educate and bring the community together.

Yimeng Zheng: I am a third year student major in nutritional science. I am very interested in learning about food, nutrition, and community food sustainability. I’m enthusiastic about getting involved in this project to gain knowledge of community organization to offer educational programs, foods, and to engage with the community stakeholders.

The Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub project has brought us together and we hope we can provide some needed “nutrients” for the project to flourish. As a group we chose this project because we felt we had a diverse enough background to cover the variety of  aspects of a group garden. We have members that were interested in the gardening, others were interested in the food and cooking aspects, and sustainability as whole. Our goal as a team is to provide the community with a well rounded project that utilizes our knowledge in food science, nutrition and applied animal biology to nourish food sovereignty in the community.   By using the Asset-based community model we realize that everyone has strength and interests and by allowing members to work on areas of the project that they excel at will strengthen the project overall (Mathie and Cunningham, 2003).  Therefore, our varying interests will be an asset in helping the Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Hub reach their goals.

Alexa, Jenny, Tamara, Madelaine, Yimeng

Community Project

The goals of the project are to create a year-round growing plan that provides locally grown food for the community, and to prepare educational program documents that can be used by the food hub when educating community members.

Our Focus

In the 2015 winter term the previous LFS 350 group provided the Food Hub with operation procedures as they felt this is what could benefit the project most. Through meetings with Joanne (community partner) the idea of focusing on education and community engagement through the community garden sprouted, as both sides felt this is where our strengths could shine. The food hub already has strengths and personnel in the gardening aspect, and we as a team believe these strengths and knowledge should be respected. Our teams plans to survey community members from a varying demographics to gauge interest in the educational programs they would like to see. As this project was planted by the community, we would also like to see the community have a voice in how it grows and develops. This also ties in with the asset-based approach as we see the community members as the key stakeholders of the project, and not only the recipients of the food hub (Mathie and Cunningham, 2003). Their opinions need to be heard, listened and responded to, by the members that are making the decisions. It is through these community surveys and conversations we hope to build strong bridges between the decisions makers and the community.

Goals and Objectives

• To improve food sovereignty through community garden workshops
• To use food and gardening to bring together the community
• To provide workshops that allow a multicultural area to work and play together through food and cooking
• To provide workshops that allow all ages of the community to come together to enjoy and benefit from the community garden

Reflection

Although the project has just begun, the process has been exciting but challenging as it is easy to feel lost at times. At the beginning we were unsure of the focus of the project, this causes some anxiety within the group. In many other courses objectives are more clear and standardized while in this project the creativity and focus is left up to the students. This is both exciting and challenging as it is causing us to work out of our comfort zones. Once we met with the community partner the focus became more clear and our anxieties over the project started to subsided. The meeting sparked something within the team and we cannot wait to see how this project grows. Our next step is the project proposal and thus the anxiety will most likely return but we believe we have the skills as a team to provide the community with a great way to increase food sovereignty.  We are looking forward to engaging with the community in the upcoming weeks and getting to the roots of what educational programs can sprout from this community garden.

References

• 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.