“Food is the problem and solution.”
– A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA
Hello and welcome back to our blog! Those of you reading the above citation might be a bit intrigued. As LFS students partaking in community food engagement projects, the TED talk by Ron Finley speaks to the nature of our class as we will explain a little later on. Hello and welcome back to our blog! During the past few weeks, we have worked as a group to identify, implement and achieve our objectives and goals, overcame obstacles in our project and used our unique strengths to contribute to group work. We have made some exciting progress in our community lunch program that we can’t wait to share with you! First of all, we completed our project proposal last week, where we introduced the background and significance of our GNH community lunch project in detail, identified the purpose and objectives, designed inquiry questions, planned the research methods to use, and the budget to follow. To view a copy of our project proposal, click here: Group 16 Proposal Report.
Photo credit: Amber Searwar
In this blog post, we are sharing with you our weekly objectives and achievements, reflections on moments that provided significance in our project, and lastly we are identifying our upcoming objectives and strategies on how to achieve them. Please keep reading to find these out!
| Week | Objectives | Achievements |
| 1 | – Introduce group members |
– introduced ourselves to each other and discovered how to communicate effectively as a group |
| 2 | – Divide tasks for 1st blog posting | –divided tasks evenly among group members -everyone felt included in the project and no one felt overwhelmed with work |
| 3 | – 1st blog posting submitted for September 23rd | – 1st blog posted on September 23rd
– worked as a group to complete the first blog posting on time – everyone felt accomplished for completing the first formal written assignment of the term |
| 4 | – Create project proposal outline for October 4th
– Divide tasks for project proposal |
– created and submitted the project proposal outline as a group – divided tasks evenly among group members |
| 5 | – 1st blog posting revision for October 5th
– Project proposal submitted for October 9th – Divide tasks for 2nd blog posting |
– we got stronger as a group by completing the project proposal together – everyone felt appreciated and that they had a say in our project -we had a better understanding on what our community project entails |
| 6 | – Attend GNH Tuesday lunch program to understand how the program is run and help with setup and cleanup of the hall
– Assist with GNH Wednesday Pay-What-You-Can lunch and speak with community members to understand how they enjoy the current meal and how we can improve the quality of the Wednesday lunches – understand more on how GNH contributes to fight food injustice through the lunch program -talk to volunteers and record their view on this lunch program, the system, and the members – 2nd blog posting submitted for October 14th |
– Two group members went to GNH on Tuesday, October 11th to get familiarized with the kitchen and meal-serving procedures
– familiarized ourselves with the kitchen and community space at GNH – met the volunteers and saw how much they enjoy being able to help the community – Successfully served a community lunch on Wednesday, October 12th – had conversations with the community members and were able to get insight on what they like and don’t like about the current Wednesday lunch program – Collected data (comment cards) and spoke with members of the community –comment cards were compiled into an excel document – Completed 2nd blog posting on October 14th |
| 7 | – Put all of the information and data gathered from the first community lunch into excel and word documents
– Revise 2nd blog posting |
|
| 8 | – Prepare our meal (chili, salad, buns, and cookies) for October 26th at GNH
– Ask community members if they prefered this meal and if they would like to see it again in the future – Compile data collected from the two Wednesday visits and understand how and if we can help the program to improve their Wednesday Pay-What-You-Can lunches – Divide tasks for 3rd blog posting – formulate a detailed recipe to send to GNH with the amount of ingredients and some notes describing improvements to our meal -look at whether this meal can be sustainable for future meals |
|
| 9 | – 3rd blog posting submitted for November 6th
-reflect on overall experience at GNH -reflect on the difficulties of the members ability to become food secure -look further into improvements at GNH based on their assets |
|
| 10 | – Revise 3rd blog posting | |
| 11 | – Divide tasks for 4th blog posting | |
| 12 | – 4th blog posting submitted for November 27th
– Prepare our final project presentation slides and report – Discuss on how we’re going to finalize our project for the term |
|
| 13 | – Files submitted for final project presentation and final written report on November 27th |
Notes from the video “A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA (Ron Finley)”
Ron shows us how an individual’s behavior and action could have a positive influence on the food system. Just like South Central LA, the West End of Vancouver has many liquor stores and fast food restaurants, which may be indirectly related to the high obesity rate. Accessibility to healthy food is crucial to promote food system transition and GNH plays an important role in it. During the last weeks Wednesday lunch at GNH, our group assisted in making sandwiches with local grown vegetables. Just as Ron’s achievement in food sustainability and security started with planting fruits and vegetables along the sidewalk, the benefits from eating what you grow can build up and positively impacts food system upgrades. Continuous improvements on local food systems is in line with our objectives and achievements in the past few weeks.
What, So What & Now What?
What?
The project, thus far, has been both enjoyable and rewarding. However, there have been some challenges that arose. First, writing the proposal for our project was quite difficult. Upon starting the proposal we were still unclear with our project specifics which lead into a vague understanding of the proposal requirements from our group as a whole. The proposal guidelines made us feel that we had to change our perceptions of our project in order to receive an acceptable grade. It was a frustrating experience to feel confused about the proposal, and after attempting to clarify our issues, we were still left perplexed. The frustration, however, was always directed towards the project and never to each other. Luckily, our TA emailed us a few days later with some advice describing her expectations of our proposal. The advice gave us clarity and described certain what was expectations for both the proposal and our project. Now that the proposal is finally finished and handed in, each member in our group fully understands our project and, in addition, we are prepared to work together to accomplish the objectives that we have set out to do.
Another hiccup was the disorganization of our first GNH Wednesday lunch. The staff and volunteers had not been informed of our presence beforehand, even though two of our group members stopped by GNH the day prior to get acquainted with the kitchen and with proper setup procedures. We had to explain to the staff as to why we were attending this lunch and helping out in the kitchen. At first, they were not very responsive to our help, and needed detailed information regarding our tasks for that day. One of the staff members was almost reluctant to have us ask the community members to rate their meal. With some explanation, the staff and volunteers came around and it ended up being a very productive day. The community members quite enjoyed speaking to us and we enjoyed learning about them and brainstorming ideas that could improve the Wednesday lunches. We noticed that the Wednesday and Tuesday lunches differed quite a bit. On Wednesdays, there was less help and less community members that attended this lunch. The first Wednesday participating in this program as a whole group was a significant moment in our growth of the project; it allowed us to better understand the program and all the experience will help us in two weeks when we create and implement our own menu.
Photo credit: Ula Zhu
So What?
From both these experiences, we have realized that we are a very strong team who works well together. We expect complications to arise in execution of our project, but with the support and trust of one another we
will be able to overcome such obstacles. In addition, we believe our project at GNH can have a positive influence on their current food system. Watching the TED Talk from Ron, a gardener in LA, showed us how an individual’s behavior and actions could have a positive influence on the food system. Just like South Central LA, the West End of Vancouver has many liquor stores and fast food restaurants, which may be indirectly related to the high obesity rate and food insecurity. Accessibility to nutritious foods are crucial to promote food system transition and GNH plays an important role in doing so.
During the last week’s Wednesday lunch at GNH, our group assisted in making sandwiches with local grown vegetables from GNH Farm. Just as Ron’s achievement in food security started with planting fruits and vegetables along the sidewalk, the benefits from eating what you grow can build up and positively impact the food system (Finley, 2013). Our objectives and achievements are in line with the continuous improvements within the local food system.
Now What?
During our next visit, we will prepare a vegetable chili for GNH Wednesday lunch program in attempt to help increase food security by providing a nutritional and filling meal. According to Miewald & Ostry (2014), community food-based programs are particularly important in addressing food security issues among low-income populations, and meal programs can help community members to meet nutritional needs directly. In the case of GNH, the participants of the lunch
program are primarily elderly, who may not be able to prepare their own meals, are unable to afford to dine in a restaurant and have mobility issues which hinder food accessibility. We would like to improve their lunch experience and see our meal plan become a sustainable option for GNH in the future.
Photo credit: Ula Zhu
Upcoming Objectives & Strategies
Our upcoming objectives in the next two weeks are to:
- Learn about the qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research methodologies;
- Learn about the case study methodology;
- Utilize the learned research methodologies into the next GNH community lunch gathering;
- Finalize our meal serving plan for the second GNH community lunch, which will happen on October 26th, 2016.
To achieve these objectives, some future steps will need to be taken. In our case, our project only utilizes qualitative data collection. The comment cards we created include a numerical rating scale and an open-ended feedback question, which was subjective and done through interviewing the community members. Our group members made observations and will improve our service for the next visit based on our data interpretation. The same research methodology will be applied into the next GNH Wednesday community lunch. In the following two weeks, we will finalize our meal serving plan for the second GNH community lunch, on October 26th, 2016. Specific tasks will be assigned to each group member prior to the visit to ensure efficiency in preparation, as well as for professionalism in the community. In addition, based on the feedback from community members, a light dessert may be included in our meal plan, upon approval of the program coordinator.
Next week, we will be visiting GNH again to cook and serve our second meal, which is a vegetarian chili with a seasonal green salad. Curious to find out how the community members like the chili? Visit our page in the next couple of weeks and find out about our experiences on our 2nd meal at GNH!
References
Finley, R., (2013, March). A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA. Retrieved from: http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-xx-flexible-learning-2-of-4/
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