Our group will be working closely with Ray-Cam Cooperative Community Centre over the course of this CBEL Project. Ray-Cam is a non-profit organization that is based in East Vancouver. Their organization is actively involved in their local community, providing a wide range of programs and services for both families and individuals. Their programs help provide community members with educational, recreational, social, cultural and economic skills and knowledge with the goal of helping them make successful and fulfilling life choices. Ray-Cam is particularly involved with youth in the community, providing many programs specifically for children, teens and young adults. Ray-Cam runs a community centre on E. Hastings St. where many of their projects are initiatives are run out of.  Our CBEL group will be working with Ray-Cam on their Home Grown Wall Project.

The Home Grown Wall Project is an initiative that resulted from the success of Ray-Cam’s Food Wall demonstration in which Ray-Cam was able to successfully grow a large number of vegetables using a vertical garden. For the Home Grown Wall Project, Ray-Cam wants to build one hundred smaller vertical gardens that will be scaled down to be able to fit on balconies and in smaller yards. They will then distribute these gardens to different community members to provide families and individuals with a sustainable and renewable food source. Ray-Cam has invited our group to help design and prototype these wall gardens as a part of our CBEL Project. By the end of this term, our goal is to have completed a final copy of the design and to possibly construct a prototype if time permits.

The major design considerations of these vertical gardens include the cost of the materials, the mobility of the gardens, and the implementation of a proper irrigation system. The cost of the materials must be kept to a minimum otherwise Ray-Cam will be unable to afford to manufacture as many gardens as they want to. The mobility of the gardens is also very important as Ray-Cam wants to be able to distribute the gardens to community members as quickly as possible after manufacturing them. Collapsible frames or placing wheels on the base of the gardens are design options that will subsequently be considered. The most challenging aspect of the design will likely be the irrigation system. A vertical garden format makes it challenging to evenly water and irrigate all of the crops growing on the wall. As a result, our group will need to find a solution that will allow the owners of these gardens to be able to water all of their plants effectively.

In order to achieve all of these goals, our group will need to work well together in order to optimize our time and efficiency. We plan on doing this by meeting weekly to discuss the progress of the project. At these meetings, we determine which phase of the project we are currently working on in relation to accomplishing our goals. At the end of every meeting, we assign each group member tasks that they need to complete before our next weekly meeting. By organizing our team in this manner, each member knows what is expected of him or her and our team as a whole is able to stay focused and on track towards reaching our goals.

This blog’s purpose is to communicate the progress of the design and development of new collapsible vertical gardens as a part of Ray Cam Cooperative Community Centre’s Home Grown Wall project. Ray-Cam is a non-profit organization that encourages people to use their individual strengths to help benefit their community as a whole. Their community centre located on E Hastings St. in Vancouver runs a wide range of projects and programs dedicated to helping improve the quality of life for people living in the area. One such program is the Home Grown Wall project.

The Home Grown Wall project was created due to the success Ray-Cam had with its Food Wall Demonstration, which produced a substantial amount of vegetables that had been grown using vertical gardens that were secured to the side of an exterior wall. Ray-Cam used the harvested food to help contribute to their childcare lunch program as well as providing food to families and other individuals in the community. Because of the success of this demonstration, Ray-Cam has decided to launch the Home Grown Wall project which has the goal of manufacturing one hundred smaller vertical gardens that can be used on balconies and in smaller yards. Ray-Cam then hopes to distribute these smaller gardens to people in the community to provide them with a sustainable food source and to continue to use them to provide for their childcare lunch program.

As a part of this program, Ray-Cam has asked a group of UBC Civil Engineering students to assist in the design and construction of a prototype for these small vertical gardens. As a result, the Home Grown Wall project is one of this year’s Civil 202 CBEL projects. CBEL, or Community-Based Experiential Learning, are community based projects aimed to provide students with hands on experience while providing technical help for non-profit community projects and initiatives. These projects are run as part of the Civil 202 course offered at UBC. Each project has been assigned a team of second year civil engineering students who are to assist with various aspects of the project including data collection and analysis, design, and in some cases construction and development. Throughout the duration of the term, each team of students will be in communication with both the organization they are involved with as well as a UBC Graduate student who will mentor them during the project.

For the Home Grown Wall project, UBC has provided Ray-Cam with a team of 6 students to help with the design and possible construction of a prototype that Ray-Cam will be able to use to help manufacture one hundred vertical gardens. The team members are as follows:

Mandy Tam was born in Vancouver and is in charge of communicating and organizing site visits and meetings with Ray-Cam for this project. She looks forward to working with the community center to provide the Lunch Program at Ray-Cam with fresh vegetables.

Meghan Grant is from Courtenay on Vancouver Island. She will be in charge of communicating with the team’s mentor and organizing and scheduling meetings between the team and the mentor.

Danny Hsieh is from Vancouver. He will be one of the two main people in charge of the design process and ensuring that the designs are completed thoroughly and on time.

Parinaz Shahmoradi is from Iran and she is responsible for the team’s scheduling. She will be keeping track of all important dates and deadlines and is responsible for informing the rest of the group of any upcoming deadlines.

Thomas Van Wermeskerken is from Langley and he is responsible for taking minutes at all team meetings. He is also one of the two main people in charge of the project design.

Thomas Bekenn is from Steveston and he is in charge of completing the team’s blog throughout the term. He will be updating the blog throughout the term with photos from site visits and updates on the progress of the project.

A photo of the student CBEL team.