Blog 4 – Ending off Our Projects!

Our Vancouver Food Policy Council project has come to an end. In the last 3 months, six of us worked together with our community partners, Vicky and Tara, to advocate for a universal healthy school meal program across B.C. Through the research of our project, we learned that school meal programs can be very helpful to reduce some aspects of food insecurity by reducing the financial burden for low-income households. At the same time, school meal programs could provide good quality, healthy meals for vulnerable children for free to low cost. Throughout the term, we also learnt how to accept diverse perspectives within a group and how to manage our time efficiently for group work. To end our final blog post, we are going to wrap up our important findings and what messages we wish for you to remember.

Moment of Significance:

Throughout the term, we drew on a graph to show the relationship between our confidence levels and any significant moments. Our group members show improving confidence after we meet with the community partner but also some ups and downs. Vicky and Tara provided us with many useful documents and resources related to our project to help lead us into the right direction.

Weekly Objectives

Again, we will be using the What? So what? Now what? Framework by Rolfe et al. (2001) 

What?

In week 10, we learned how to create a well-design infographic. According to the lecture readings, a good infographic should include visual and clear elements to diverse audience and it should follow the format of “telling a story, identifies causes and issues, provides available data and inspires solutions” (Valley, 2018). We created our infographic based on the lecture instructions and got good feedback from our community partners. 

Alternatively, you can see a copy in PDF format here: Infographic_Group14_VFPC

As our project is coming to an end, our group has been finalizing the data collected, and discussing the findings and conclusion. The program team has aimed to collect information about 25 different meal programs across British Columbia and organized the data on an excel sheet. At the same time, the resource team has been summarizing resources and policies provided by Tara and Vicky and looking for additional policies regards to school meal programs in British Columbia.

We also found that each school offers various types of meal programs as they are decided by the school board.  There are breakfast, lunch and snack programs supported by different funding models such as non-profit organizations, catering, parents advisory committee and subsidized government programs. After discussing with the group members and our community partners, we identified this as one of the limitations of the project due to the broad nature of the current school food system. Another limitation is that as our research was an online review, we could have missed many programs that were not available by searching online.

Furthermore, since there were so many meal programs, policies, and resources that we found and analyzed, we found it difficult to come up with a conclusion. At this stage, we felt discouraged as we thought the amount of research and resources that we have found would allow us to make some contribution to the issue and help Tara and Vicky with proposing a universal school meal program. However, as Will mentioned in the lecture, these findings can help with discovering what is lacking in the field. This, makes it a significant finding.

So What?

According to our web-based search from UBC library and Google, we learn that there are 537,589 students in K-12 in BC. As there is no recent statistics on overweight and obese children in BC, we found that there are 19.8% overweight children and 11.7% obese children in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2015). Most of school aged children consumed few vegetables and fruits, while they consumed higher amounts of refined grains, saturated fat and sodium than the recommended amounts (Jennifer, 2014). A universal school meal program can be a good model by serving healthy but tasty food. For example, school meal programs could provide a variety nutrients and enough energy for children. However, it’s not enough to only offer students school lunches, but also important to help them with shaping healthy eating habits (Food Secure Canada, 2015).  School lunch programs not only benefit the children, but also reduce financial burden for low-income households as they are affordable. If school lunch programs reduce the expenditure on children’s lunch, those households can shift budget from money saved for lunches to other healthy food costs. Therefore, school lunch programs can contribute in one way to help reducing food insecurity for low income households across BC.

Image retrieved from https://sustainontario.com/work/edible-education/say-yes/

Now What?

During our final meeting, not many specific comments were given by Tara and Vicky. We assume this is due to the fact that we were unable to find as many new policies as we have initially hoped for. However, we were able to gather and organize many of the current programs and policies that Tara and Vicky have provided.

Most policies found or shared by Tara and Vicky are related to guidelines to nutrition and what is sold in school. We couldn’t find any policies in place regarding school meal programs. Therefore, future research should include community-based qualitative assessments to encompass a bigger picture of the school food system. One findings we have discovered through our research was that quantitative evaluation may not be as feasible. This is due to the broad system and individual varieties across programs that make it hard to quantify the exact number of available programs that exist.

We have concluded that the current school food system is not sustainable primarily due to the existing complexity of current system in BC, where it is not necessarily due to finances (this also requires further research). Therefore, we urge collaborative work between stakeholders and all levels of government. In addition, we should advocate for a universal program because it will not only benefit the children and take on some of the burden associated with food insecurity, but also support local farmers through partnerships (Powell and Wittman, 2018). A cost-shared universal school meal program is needed to help address issues of food insecurity and poor diet quality in children.

Image retrieved from: http://www.supportingeducation.org/2013/08/16/how-to-pack-a-healthy-lunch/

Final Words

Now that our presentation is finished and presented in front of our peers, TAs, Will, and community partners, all we have left is our final report, which can summarize what we found and learnt in this course. From the request of our community partners, we will be presenting in front of VFPC during their weekly meeting at the end of April where the working team will have a chance to see our posters again. We will be answering any questions that they have in terms of what we did, and hopefully our work throughout the term could be any help for the VFPC team in terms of policy-making of universal food program in BC.

Our work may not have been enough to bring significant change for the VFPC, but we hope that this can be a way to jumpstart the partnership between LFS 350  and VFPC. We found limitations in our research and hopefully this limitation that we faced can be the foundation for a better collaboration between VFPC and the next LFS 350 team to have a better result for the project.

Going on, it is important to remember the themes and readings from LFS 350 to help us with greater success in group projects. For example, regarding Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), Mathie and Cunningham (2003) explain the importance of utilizing the skills and resources you have already, instead of picking on the things that you don’t have and relying on external help. This can build a meaningful relationship between the community that strengthens engagement and active listening. According to the Power and Privilege module, as a community, we must also be sensitive to issues such as race, ethnicity, culture and gender. To address issues effectively, we must listen to a diverse amount of people, including experts, stakeholders and citizens in order to encompass the whole picture.

There were uncertainties, confusion, and worries on how much of a help we can be to VFPC and what the LFS 350 teaching team wanted from us. However, I think it was the uncertainty and confusion that motivated us to think more to figure out a better solutions and possibilities. Even though we were not able to find any solution in terms of policy making due to its vastness, but we feel the pride that we have tried and participated in the attempt to change. It was a pleasure to participate in a project and collaborate with the VFPC, where it could lead to a great cause for children in BC who are facing food insecurity.

It’s time to say good-bye. We thank you all for following along our journey. We hope that you can be inspired to show your voice and help the Vancouver Food Policy Council to achieve their goal in advocating for a universal school food policy. We hope that through this long process, many children can receive healthy and nutritious food with little to no cost.

We had such a wonderful experience in learning and collaborating with the Vancouver Food Policy Council and would like to thank them for being such great mentors and inspiration for us. We would also like to thank the LFS 350 teaching team for being so patient and helpful in guiding us through this journey by providing critical feedback. We have truly cherished the experience and friendship we have built through this project.

Reference

Food Secure Canada. (2015, March 19). For a Universal Healthy School Food Program. Retrieved March 01, 2018, from https://foodsecurecanada.org/CHSF2015

Jennifer A. Woo Baidal, M.D., M.P.H., and Elsie M. Taveras, M.D., M.P.H.,(2014). Protecting Progress against Childhood Obesity-The National School Lunch Program. Retrieved from: http://www.nejm.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/doi/10.1056/NEJMp1409353

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.

Powell, L. J., & Wittman, H. (2018). Farm to school in British Columbia: Mobilizing food literacy for food sovereignty. Agriculture and Human Values, 35(1), 193-206. doi:10.1007/s10460-017-9815-7

MODULE: Power + Privilege. Engaged Scholarship. University of Memphis

Statistics Canada. (2015). Overweight and obesity in children and adolescents: Results from the 2009 to 2011 Canadian Health   Measures Survey. Retrieved from https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2012003/article/11706-eng.htm

Valley, W. (2018). Land Food and Community II. Retrieved from online lecture note: https://canvas.ubc.ca/conversations?#filter=type=inbox