Weekly Objectives and Achievements:
This week’s greatest objectives were to assess our project’s progress as a group and address areas that could be improved. One point mentioned was better “quality control” to ensure that our group reports follow the assigned rubrics. We hope that by doing so, we will be better equipped to meet the expectations of the teaching team and achieve better grades on future assignments, since a few in the past have been dismal. Another objective was to meet more frequently in person to ensure we come together as a team and write cohesively and uniformly in our assignments.
We have successfully achieved one of the main objectives mentioned in previous blog posts, which was to finish collecting data for our project. Trout Lake Farmers Market and three nearby grocers, Safeway, Dollar Grocers, and Donald’s Market were visited, from which we collected our third and final set of data. This completion has allowed us to start organizing our data collection into an excel table, in order to be able to present our results in the most comprehensive manner in our final presentation and report.
In addition to the quantitative data collected on the costs of produce, our series of visits to the different communities of Vancouver has allowed us to achieve greater insight to the local food system in these areas. We were able to hear from members of various local communities about what they think about farmers, Farmers Markets, and their own food choices. After our visits to the Farmers Markets, each member shared their own experiences and feelings from their visit, which deepened our connection as a group. We also managed to identify and discuss any tensions, limitations or weaknesses that arose during the process of the project. As fewer objectives are left to be attained and as we near the completion of our project, we hope our past experiences of working on this project, both individually and as a group, will allow us to finish strong with a project we can all be proud of.
Moment of Significant Change:
During session 8 of the LFS 350 course, “Managing Scope Change,” our group assessed and discussed our progress with regards to our project and course assignments. By highlighting our successes and shortcomings, we gained greater insight into our moments of significant change. At first, we were unsure about the purpose of the workshop and did not take it very seriously. This was because some of us found it difficult to be truly honest about our feelings and express our dissatisfaction that arose during the process of our project. However, with the encouragement from our TA, telling us to be open and honest with each other, we were able to thoroughly discuss our group’s weaknesses.
Each of us in the group agreed on many moments of significance, which we realized while mapping out our group’s significant changes chart after doing it individually. The first moment of significance was when we first met our group. We all agreed that this was an exciting time because we got to choose our project and share each other’s expectations and hopes for our project. Our third moment of significance, and arguably the most important, was when we met with members of the teaching team during a tutorial session. They questioned the purpose, significance, and direction of our project. The discussion resulted in confusion and uncertainty in many aspects of our project. It was a frustrating moment, but it allowed us to think critically about our methods and how we might better plan our work to ensure successful completion. As a result, we were able to come up with more concrete idea on our project’s focus and what we hoped to achieve in the long run. We were glad that this confusion happened early in the project’s development.
During this session, many moments of tension also arose while discussing our group’s and our group members’ hardships. Many of us felt that group member’s contribution to assignments, especially at the beginning of the course, were not equal. Speaking up about such conflicts was not easy, but we all respected one another’s opinion and appreciated individual honesty in regards to our work together and the progress we have made to date.
The lowest point on our group’s significant moments graph was when we got our grade for the proposal report. It was frustrating to discuss the causes of the poor result, but because we knew we could be honest with each other, even this sensitive matter was communicated in a positive way. This allowed us to encourage each other for doing better on future assignments and finding ways to improve our work. These low point discussions made us realize that we need to work more in unison by communicating more often, being open to express our opinions, and participating more in each member’s individual work. We hope that these efforts will allow us to become a more efficient and united team.
Overall, this Moment of Significant Change workshop has definitely motivated us to continue to work harder and strive for further positive achievements. It helped guide us on how we will work as a team for the remainder of the course and for the final report. The workshop also reminded us of our greater overall goal, which is to create and do meaningful work for and within the City of Vancouver. This means that our project is more about the community than about us as individuals. Ron Finley’s street garden initiative in South Central LA is a selfless project motivated to create a better food system in his city and to spark a desire to eat healthier nutritious foods that will promote better health for the community. He puts community benefit above all by sacrificing his time, efforts, and money to increase people’s accessibility to healthy foods. Furthermore, this sustainable, volunteer based project clearly demonstrates the principles of asset-based community development, because they are using existing vacant street land as a valuable resource in creating community gardens. Our group must keep this crucial principle in mind, that we should be at the service of others, and share what we can to benefit our community members, throughout the remainder of our project. Lastly, we concluded that we hope to end our project as a positive experience.
Strategies for a Successful Project Completion:
Throughout our project, we have encountered numerous moments of both tension and pleasure which we outlined and discussed as a group in the moments of significant change workshop mentioned above. As a result, we believe that our communication and knowledge of our team dynamics will allow us to successfully complete our project. And that this better understanding of each member’s strengths and weaknesses will allow us to maximize our team’s abilities by efficiently allocating the tasks required for the final group assignments.
We now realize that there had been a lack of communication between members during the project, which has hindered our success. To correct this, we have now made it a key group objective to identify and exchange our thoughts and agree on what we would like to achieve as a group. Keeping this in mind, we are planning to meet more often to make sure that everyone is satisfied with our group’s progress with the project and assignments. For each of the tasks, we will set up a date before the deadline to meet, to edit and discuss any concerns we might have before submitting it. As for the last blog posting, group members will meet up together to share our ideas and experiences, such as our up and down moments, and summarize them to be included in the posting.
Taking into account the low mark we received on our proposal report, we have agreed that we must follow the rubrics carefully when working on our future assignments. In addition to following the instructions, we will make sure to double check whether we are on the right track, review each other’s work, and encourage all group members to contribute equally.
Looking forward, we have the final presentation, final report and the last blog posting left to work on as a group. In addition to the strategies mentioned above, we will ensure that we incorporate all the feedbacks given by the TA, our peers and the community members when we work on the final report. These considerations will hopefully allow us to reach our goal, which is to provide a reliable cost guide for Vancouver residents; to enable them to make educated decisions on choosing the produce they buy. Along with the cost guide, we also wish to inform our partner organization about other factors that need to be studied and considered for a more comprehensive understanding of the Vancouver’s Farmers Markets role in the community.
Lastly, we hope that these strategies will enable our group to achieve a final result that can fulfill the expectations of all members, not only in our individual and group work, but also on the small beneficial impact we may have on our fellow community members and the Vancouver Farmers Market.