Group 4
LFS 350 BLOG POST

September 23, 2016

          You may have heard about the Royal Canadian Legion, but you may not know the Royal Canadian Legion is Canada’s largest Veteran support and community service organization. We are group 4 in LFS 350 class, the group working on the Legion Food System (Grandview branch) project. We invite you to follow our progress through our blog postings and explore the Legion’s dynamic food system in the Grandview community.

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The Grandview Legion!

          Grandview Legion was founded in 1945, making it one of five original Branches of the Royal Canadian Legion in Vancouver. It is located on Commercial Drive in the Grandview-Woodland community, on the Vancouver east side. A beautiful neighbourhood with family houses, a whole foods grocery store, several coffee shops, community parks and most notably, the commercial-broadway skytrain station all within walking distance of the Legion.

 

Who are we

          From left to right, Maryam AboMoslim is a third year Nutritional Sciences student, interested in applied nutrition on an international level, particularly in North Africa and in (nutritionally) food insecure neighbourhoods. Olivier Bernal is a third year Food Market Analysis student, interested in product and agricultural development. Kelsey Welham is a fourth year in Global Resource systems, interested in international development and trade policy. Qingyang Xie is also a third year in Nutritional Sciences. She is interested in dietary and lifestyle improvements to optimize health and prevent diseases. Seraph Yu is a third year in Nutritional Science, interested in preventing or treating nutrition-related problems such as diabetes. Lastly, Shenmiao Li  is a fourth year in Food Sciences, interested in local food strategies that ensure food safety and security.  Individually, we have different backgrounds and interests, but through this course and and the Phillips reading, we’ve come to see this diversity as a strength and intend to use it to our advantage!  As also mentioned in Vogt and Goldman’s “Raising the Bar Podcast”, diversity in a work group can lead to a solution that is based on dynamic ways of thinking.

 

#GOALS

          All of us are excited about the opportunity to explore a community that we were not familiar with as well as engage with individuals that we would not normally have the chance to at the Grandview Legion. The intergenerational exchange of knowledge, opportunity for creativity,  and exploration of the food system were common interests we found amongst ourselves. A common goal we have established is to successfully learn how to conduct an asset-based community assessment, a tool whose importance is highlighted in the reading by Mathie and Cunningham. It is  also a goal of ours to respect and incorporate their views and their  goals. The importance of this has been highlighted specifically in Ernesto Sirolli’s TED talk, which discusses the need for capturing the passion, energy and imagination of this community and being sure to only help to empower them to realize their goals and visions. We aim to identify how how food relates to organizational components of this legion and to enhance the relationships between the legion and their surrounding community.

First Impressions…

          Our first impression of this process is that there are going to be many actors, interests and constraints that needed to be taken into consideration. We plan to work alongside these members and conduct interviews and questionnaires. This will entail working closely with the Legion administration employees and members who will  have been involved in the legion for a significant amount of time, and have certain ways of doing things and we must be respectful of this.  It will be an integral part of this process to make use of and see the potential in the assets that we have, not those that we do not as outlined by the asset based community development model.