Time flies and we are on the last week of our project. As we anticipated, stress levels have risen again. Deadlines are beginning to pile up as the finish line is right ahead of us. So we are working hard to produce results that we will be proud of. Although this may be the last post from us, we want to make it a meaningful one by discussing another moment of significance that left a big impact on us and led us to what we will showcase in our presentation and final report.

What?

A moment of significance that occurred in the course (and especially our project) was our collaboration with Lorraine Chow during the Food Bank Challenge. We initially planned on creating a recipe book based on uncommon foods that are not usually found in Western diets. Alongside, we would have been helping facilitate one workshop that focused on teaching community members how they could use the foods in their food bags. However, as a result of the collaboration, the direction of our project deliverable changed to one that our group and the Hastings Sunrise community partners agreed was more appropriate to the community – a food skills guide. The Food Bank Challenge was a one day event, located at the Thunderbird Community Centre, where our group, under the guidance and direction of Lorraine, was challenged to make a meal with only the items that a recipient would receive for that one week from the food bank. During the meet-up, Lorraine’s insight and experiences helped us realize that a food skills guide would be more beneficial in building community capacity in food security within the Hastings Sunrise community. By getting a more hands-on experience we were able to better understand the day-to-day challenges faced by those living with low-income and experiencing food insecurity.

So What?

Our new understanding that was gained from the change in our deliverable was that as we became more immersed in the project over time, the objectives became clearer, and we gained new insights that dictated the outcome of the project. Participating in the Food Bank Challenge was the moment where we wanted to re-evaluate the effectiveness of our initial deliverable. It was through the challenge that we were better able to understand the community’s food system as we were no longer simply theorizing the issue, but actually seeing it for ourselves, which is one of the main reasons why Lorraine wanted to invite us to her community kitchen. Questions we asked ourselves during the Food Bank Challenge were:

• How can we make a deliverable that is accessible to everyone in the community?
• Will it be understandable by all community members?
• Will it improve food skills?
• Will it be effective in accomplishing our ultimate goal for this project, which is enhancing food literacy?

Since the shift of our objectives came so late into the project, we had to adapt quickly and work efficiently in order to still meet the deadline. Reflecting back at our situation, we learned that no matter how clear a project may seem in the beginning, there will always be unpredictable instances and obstacles that will change the course of the project. In the beginning of the course, our instructor, Will Valley, mentioned the importance of being flexible when working with our community partners. We kept this in mind as the months went by and we believe that through this reminder, we were able to not be too flustered when change continually occurred throughout the project.

Now What?

In evaluating the success of our project, the broader issue that needs to be considered is increasing access to healthy and affordable foods. In terms of food literacy, having knowledge of how foods can be prepared, cooked, and stored are essential for community members to be able to support themselves in their community food system. However, the knowledge cannot be applied if food choices are unavailable. Therefore, building community capacity is essential to building independence within the food system. To help initiate the process, we started a food skills guide. By attending the facilitator meeting and the Food Bank Challenge, we learned that some barriers people face are not knowing how to cook and/or not having the time, transportation, money, and childminding to obtain food and then cook a meal. However, they do know what a nutritious meal looks like and are interested in learning more. Therefore, by providing the knowledge to prepare common produce along with the knowledge of meal ideas, one would be better able to make a healthy meal.

To improve access to healthy and affordable foods, those doing the important work of advocating for improved accessibility should continue their endeavors. Moreover, municipal governments and planners should give convenience and grocery store owners as well as consumers incentives to ordering and purchasing healthy as opposed to unhealthy foods. However, potlucks can also be done where community members can combine their groceries with other members to make a meal, increase the variety in their diet, and widen the availability of kitchen equipment while decreasing the amount of time to cook meals. The idea is similar to the Lupii Community Cafe which we learned about at the facilitator meeting where they provide free community dinners in the Champlain Heights neighborhood. We hope that our food skills guide provides a template for the community to continue adding more to. Moreover, we hope the Instagram account along with the linked email can be used to receive more pictures that can be posted on the account to widen the geographic range of available inexpensive produce bags in the Lower Mainland.

However, we do acknowledge that there are limitations to the two deliverables in terms of their outreach. Both projects must be accessed via the internet which limits our audience. Therefore, a physical copy of the food skills guide should be made so people without access to the internet can use it. Furthermore, the locations of the dollar produce bags can be organized into a map. Community capacity building can also be addressed by creating a video on how to post pictures on Instagram so the account we created can be managed by community members.

Year 3 of the project will be continued in the coming spring term in which another LFS 350 group will pick up where we left off. We hope our report and collaboration over the past two and a half months will contribute, along with the next few LFS 350 groups, to the development and improvement of local food systems.

There has been a lot of effort and input put into this projects from our group members, community coordinators, and instructors. The challenges of integrating different perspectives of solving the current issues of food insecurity in Hastings Sunrise is a complex issue that cannot be covered and understood in just a few lectures. This project has broadened our views and thoughts on food security, which is the most valuable experience that we learned from this course. Though LFS 350 will end for us in one week, our contribution to this project and concerns about current issues on food security will still carry on.

References

University of Memphis. (2017). Module 5 – Capacity Building for Sustained Change. Retrieved from http://www.memphis.edu/ess/module5/index.php

All of a sudden, it is now November and the end of this project is near. The past few weeks have been hectic with major changes made to what was planned for the outcomes, but it might just work out! Things are starting to come together, but that does not mean we should relax. Just like a race, even if the finish line is in our sight, we need to continue sprinting until we cross that line. For now, let’s look at what we have done up until this point and what is planned for the remaining weeks.

Weekly Objectives & Achievements

Click here for a pdf of our timeline

Week of October 23rd

• Attended facilitator training meeting and gained better insight on how we should approach the community and the project without making assumptions about the community members.
• Created the Instagram account and have begun posting daily pictures of produce dollar bags that can be found in various grocery stores in the Lower Mainland.

Week of October 30th

• Participated in the Food Bank Challenge at the Thunderbird Community Center on Wednesday November 1st, which allowed us see what recipients get in their food bag.
• We continued to post on Instagram incorporating food literacy in our social media platform for accessing affordable and nutritious produce by including food facts into the details of the posts. Our posts mainly consist of captions stating the date of the visit to the grocery store, the items in the bags, and the location of the store.
• We Brainstormed the format for the Food Skills Survival Guide using Illustrator.

What Lies Ahead

Week of Nov. 6

• Individual Group members will choose a food ingredient and draft associated cooking methods.

Week of Nov. 13

• Complete food skills guide draft.
  • Each member will choose two kinds of produce that are popular items among grocery store’s dollar bags and discuss: how it tastes, storing, preparation, and cooking methods.
• Receive feedback on the draft from our community partners

Week of Nov. 20

• Finalize the food skills guide, incorporating suggestions from our community partners.
• Stop data collection on the fruit and vegetable count from the Instagram posts.
• Halt posts on the HSCFN Instagram on November 22nd
• Submit the infographic and receive feedback.

Week of Nov. 27

• Adjust contents and presentation of infographics accordingly to feedback.
• Present finalized infographic in the UBC Nest.
• Finish our final community project report.

Moments of Significant Change

We took some time to look at our moments of significant change during this project because it is important that we check in with each other to see how the project has been for the group as a whole. Does everyone feel the same emotionally?  As the project progresses are there differences among the group regarding the development of knowledge and skills?

Here is the graph with the trends we agreed on:

Figure 1. Time vs. Intensity Graph

Emotion

As a group, we associated emotion with stress. In Figure 1, the higher the position on the y-axis the more stress we felt as a group. A common pattern we found from every group member when we discussed our individual emotion graphs, was that the first meeting with Joanne and the Steering Committee caused a significant change in everyone emotionally. After the steering committee meeting, the group felt confused and frustrated, which played a large factor in our stress levels that continued throughout the project. Throughout weeks four to eight, our stress stayed at an all time high as multiple emails were exchanged between our group and Joanne. However, the emails were still at times unclear and the amount of work we were assigned to do with the project was overwhelming. After our second meeting with Joanne and the facilitators on week 8, we felt more confident of our roles in the project and therefore less stressed. We anticipate that in the upcoming weeks our stress levels will increase again as it will be nearing the due dates of our final project. Our group agreed that our stress levels will dwindle after the project is completed. However, it does not reach the lowest point on the y-axis as we anticipate our final marks for the project

Content

Since all of our group members took LFS 250, we were all equipped with some background knowledge on sustainable community food systems. We accumulated our knowledge by learning the ideas about food justice among different genders, ethnicities, and classes, while integrating asset-based community development concepts from LFS 350 lectures and tutorials. The community project gives us a chance to apply concepts that we have learned in the course so far to real world situations, helping to further facilitate our learning and prepare us for our future professions. For example, we learned from the HSCFN facilitator training that most of their food bag recipients are females, and that the Hastings-Sunrise community has a large Chinese demographic. We wanted to take into consideration these factors when facilitating our project and think about how we can provide a deliverable that is inclusive to everyone. One change we did was reducing the word content of the food skills guide and increasing the amount of pictures, as visual representations are easier to follow and to understand. We hope by taking into account the unique characteristics of the Hasting Sunrise Community, the food skills guide will be accessible by everyone in the community.

In the meetings with our community partners we gained additional knowledge from the partners of Hastings-Sunrise Community Food Network (HSCFN) as they know their community’s assets and strengths best. Additionally, we learned that there are many barriers the Hastings-Sunrise community faces in accessing food and garden services; for example, awareness and knowledge of existing food programs and mobility. The Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) concept was reinforced, especially during the second meeting as much of the discussion was focused on strategies to strengthen the community’s capacity and to provide additional support without diving in with a ‘deficit mind-set’ (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). The opportunity to participate in the HSCFN meetings was a valuable learning experience that could not have been replicated in lecture because we got to collaborate with community dietitians, agents, and residents

Skills

As a group, we agreed that we have accumulated some writing skills from previous courses in university before LFS 350. Our writing and communication skills have gradually increased as the community project progresses (Figure 1). We have learned the importance of using formal language in writing emails to community partners to clarify our project objectives. Additionally, we found out how crucial it is to communicate with each other and our community partner in a timely matter because information can be easily misinterpreted and the completion of tasks can be delayed. We also developed our writing skills through blog posts and the project proposal, as well as through editing our assignments with consideration to the feedback we received. We believe the quality of our writing and communication skills will continue to improve as we work on our project deliverables, report, and final presentation

The Graceful Dismount

On Wednesday November 1st, our group participated in a Food Bank challenge at the  Thunderbird Community Center’s community kitchen. The organizer received a bag of food, imitating exactly what a recipient would have received from the food bank that week. Since our participation in the challenge, our project has slightly been modified from creating a recipe book to a food skills guide in hopes to help community members make affordable, delicious, and nutritious meals from items they receive from the food bank and potential dollar bags from neighbourhood grocers. To successfully create a food skills guide, every group member will research a commonly found food item in the $1.00 food bags and it’s respective cooking methods. The guide can potentially be a resource for community members to enhance their food skills and exchange ideas thereby forming a path towards achieving collective action and empowerment (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003).

By November 8, a food skills guide deliverable will be drafted by each group member and later compiled to make one cohesive guide. We plan to meet and collaborate with a Thunderbird Community Center member that week to get further insight on the reality of a meal a food insecure person, who uses food from the food bank, would make. Their input is valuable to us as they make community meals in the Thunderbird Community kitchen often. Our contribution to the food skills guide deliverable will be complete once our draft has been revised and finalized, which then may be used as a template for others to complete in hopes of creating a book used potentially for fundraising purposes by HSCFN.

Nearing the final weeks of the course and project, our group will continue to post on the HSCFN Instagram until November 22. While finalizing the food skills deliverable we will be working on the report, infographic, and final presentation, integrating the feedback we have received throughout the project. During this time, we will also be assessing our efforts as a group on the project and reflecting on the successfulness of our project. Our successfulness of the project can be measured by looking at the completion our deliverables, but it can also be measured by how well our group members worked together while increasing our knowledge of working with a community and their stakeholders. From the beginning of our project till the end, we hope to have increasingly adopted asset-based thinking throughout our project, which is one concept first introduced to us in the beginning of LFS 350.

References

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.