Project Updates and the Graceful Dismount!

Overview

For the past few weeks, we have become a lot more engaged in our project. We’ve started conducting interviews and working on our analysis and final project report. The interviews in particular, have been a great achievement for us as they have pushed us out of our comfort zones, allowing us to be more actively involved in the project and community, as well as helping us work on our communication skills!   

Recently, we were given the opportunity to reflect on our project progress using “Moments of Significant Change” graphs. These provided insight into how our group felt, both individually and collectively, at varying times throughout the project. Graph 1 described whether we were feeling more positive or negative, while Graph 2 described how we felt our knowledge and skill levels were changing. These will be discussed in more detail below!

We’ve set an updated timeline of objectives for the remainder of the project and identified strategies  to complete the rest of our objectives. We have also divided up the remaining work to be completed, including interview analyses and final report sections. To hold each other accountable, we have also set deadlines after figuring out what timing and sections work best for everyone.

Weekly Objectives and Achievements

Dates Objectives
March 5-11
  • Conduct interviews
  • Begin interview analysis
  • Begin final project report
  • Post Blog post 3
March 12-18
  • Finish interviews
  • Analyze interview results
  • Work on report
  • Begin infographic
March 19-25
  • Work on report + infographic
  • Prepare for final project presentation
March 26 – April 1
  • Post Blog post 4
  • Presentation
April 2- April 9
  • Copy edit final project report

Reflection

 

 

The “Moments of Significant Change” graphs were useful tools that provided an opportunity to reflect and share our initial project goals and expectations (Dring, Lim, & Mendes, 2018). We were able to map out a collective story based on the experiences of each group member using graphs describing our emotions and skills/knowledge gained over the duration of our project. For our two graphs, the significant events we chose include:“finding out our project”, “first meeting with Kevin”, “writing blog post 1”, “2nd meeting with Kevin”, “contacting businesses for interviews”, and “blog post 2”. Upon completion, we were able to compare and contrast how different moments affected us individually and as a group.   

 

Graph 1: Emotions graph. “Moments of Significant Change” on the the y-axis, positive emotions above the x-axis, and negative emotions below the x-axis.

 

On the first graph, we had “emotions” on the y-axis and “Moments of Significant Change” on the x-axis. Emotions above the x-axis were considered positive while emotions below the x-axis were deemed negative. For example, all group members noted that they felt negative emotions such as stress or disappointment during the process of writing and submitting our project proposal. During our group conversation, we found that this stemmed from individuals holding different ideas of how to navigate the process, due to lack of communication between members. Some project updates could not get everyone in the loop in time. We felt it challenging to write cohesively and in a coherent manner. Moreover, the slope steepness and direction also indicated overall group feeling. Generally, we all followed a similar upward or downward trend, however some members emotions plummeted depending on their role or how they perceived the situation.

On the other hand, both meetings with Kevin and the hua foundation were positive events for group members because he was able to provide personal insight on the dynamics of businesses in Chinatown as a community member. The interview recruitment process proved to be more challenging than anticipated: at first, the lack of responses from the businesses we contacted made us feel somewhat helpless, and made us question the plausibility of our entire project. However, we strategized by using more direct ways of contact such as phone-calls and in-person visits, and even enlisted the help of our community partner Kevin Huang and his connections with local businesses. Eventually, we secured interviews with seven businesses, exceeding our proposed goal and giving us a renewed sense of hope and optimism. Overall, our group felt most positive when we initially found out about our project and after both meetings with Kevin. Morale decreased but was still positive during the writing of our first blog post, but then further dropped into the negative emotions zone as we worked on the project proposal. The group also felt positive during the first few interviews and writing of our second blog post.

 

Graph 2: Knowledge and skills graph. “Moments of Significant Change” on the the y-axis and level of skills and knowledge on the y-axis.

 

For the second graph, we had “levels of skills and knowledge” on the y-axis and “moments of significant change” on the x-axis. Overall our group showed a general pattern of increasing knowledge and skill levels over the duration of our project. We discussed how we felt our communication and listening skills improved throughout our conversations with the hua foundation and the interviews with local businesses. Additionally, our knowledge base on the connections between race, ethnicity, and food broadened substantially since starting the project. Both the hua foundation and the Session 8 lecture (Dring, C., Lim, S. & Mendes, 2018) challenged us to think critically about inequalities in the food system. We expect our collective knowledge to continue increasing as we conduct interviews with businesses. We hope to also improve our analytical and information synthesis skills after gathering data from the interviews. 

 

 

We found the exercise insightful as it provided a way to visually display our growth, both as individuals and as a team. The “moment of significant change graphs” activity was an important process and will continue contributing more towards them throughout the rest of our project. Referring back to the graphs provides insight as to how our group experiences and functions during different stages of our project – this will help us learn from our mistakes and better manage the project in future.

Graph 1 indicated that the project proposal was a low point for our team, partly due to the disappointment we felt in the feedback we received despite the time and energy we put into it. However, learning often requires that we experience feelings of anxiety and take risks in order to grow from our challenges (Shulman, 2005). In response to the feedback on the proposal, we will take steps to improve the “Introduction” and “Methods” section of our final report. By embracing the messy problems we encounter, we can find creative solutions and grow from places of discomfort (Harford, 2016). Rather than avoiding conflict and struggle, and stigmatizing failure, we can use it to our benefit to understand our weaknesses and areas of improvement (Cohn, 2015).

We noticed that we had a more positive outlook on our project after our meetings with Kevin and other members of the hua foundation. During these moments we also found that our knowledge and skill sets increased. Our discussions with Kevin were particularly valuable as he provided us with in-depth information about the Chinatown food systems – including background and historical information, factors involved in the changing foodscape, and contact information for business. This indicates that some of our most positive and valued interactions were those where we strengthened our knowledge base of the Chinatown food system and racialized food issues.

The course material during Session 8 complemented the issues we are discussing in our project (Dring, C., Lim, S. & Mendes, 2018). Diving into the intersections between food, race and justice, Session 8 solidified our understanding of cultural food assets (Dring, C., Lim, S. & Mendes, 2018). It was noted that the piece by Gibb & Wittman (2013) which we read in our first week (when we were assigned hua foundation as our community partner) is a rather seminal work linking race and food systems. While important, the point that this paper is one of the few of its kind tackling food systems inequalities is indicative of the lack of concerning the importance of cultivating a just food system, where academia should work towards exposing the injustices within our present food system.

 

 

As the University of Memphis Module on Capacity Building for Sustained Change taught us, being sensitive to the differences between group members allows us cooperate and work together in an effective manner (University of Memphis, 2018). Facilitating an activity such as the “Moments of Significant Change” at multiple times throughout a project provides an opportunity for group members to check-in and revise goals and expectations if needed. As many of us are in organizations, student clubs and other community groups, we will take this activity with us to facilitate in other team settings in the future.

Many of us were caught off guard by Session 8 (Dring, C., Lim, S. & Mendes, 2018). We learned much about the racialized structures that can occur in food systems, as well as how race and ethnicity are linked to food. As Malik Yakini noted in his TED Talk (2014), people of colour are often burdened by internalized racial oppression that suggest their history, culture, and bodies have less value. This is a challenge for collective problem solving of community issues, as individuals face a diminished view of the self (TED, 2014). Moving forward, we will also consider how we can better support marginalized communities and provide individuals with the “agency to change the conditions in their communities, rather than be subjects who are acted upon by others” (TED, 2014). This relates to our asset-based community development approach where our role as student researchers from an institution such as UBC is to serve the communities in which we operate (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). 

The Graceful Dismount

 

 

Deadlines


Our Strategy for Successful Project Completion

  • Conduct interviews and finish write ups (re-listening to the interview recordings and noting the most important/relevant points)
  • Analyze the interview data, focusing on presenting key points that are relevant to our project
  • Ensure pre-established deadlines are met and follow the calendar for meetings
  • Use our interview data, data from the hua foundation Chinatown Food Security Report, and other academic sources to complete our infographic
  • Write a rough draft of the paper in time for copy-editing
  • Check in with Kevin as interviews are conducted and as the infographic/report are completed
  • Reflect on the limitations of our project and consider how our project will move forward (seeing as the hua foundation will be doing a large-scale version of our project, so we will be able to provide some of our findings and give feedback/recommendations) 

With less than four weeks left in the term, we are reaching a critical point for our project, which is conducting the interviews and analyzing the responses we receive. We are also looking forward to compiling our data into an infographic and resource for new businesses as we wrap up this rewarding project.

References:

Cohn, G. (Producer) (2015, May 20). Failure Is Your Friend: A Freakonomics Radio Rebroadcast. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/

Dring, C., Lim, S. & Mendes, W. (2018, February). Session 8: Race and food systems. Lecture presented in LFS350, UBC, Vancouver BC.

Gibb, N., & Wittman, H. (2013). Parallel alternatives: Chinese-Canadian Farmers and the Metro Vancouver Local Food Movement. Local Environment. 18(1), 1-19

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.

TED. (2016) Tim Harford: How messy problems can inspire creativity. Retrieved from https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd_j_kw_jZQ&time_continue=331

TED. (2014, December). Malik Yankini: Food, race, and justice. Retrieved from from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miukaKDL-Cs

The University of Memphis. (2018). Module 5 – Engaged Scholarship. Retrieved March 05, 2018, from http://www.memphis.edu/ess/module5/index.php

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

 

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