Who We Are
This project, called Farm-to-School BC: Indigenous Foodscapes in Vancouver Public Schools, includes 5 undergraduate students from the University of British Columbia, under the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. They are all currently enrolled in the LFS 350 course, which allowed them to take part in this project.
Jiaying Xu
Jiaying is a third-year undergraduate student majoring Dual Degree in Food, Nutrition, and Health & Education. Two years ago, she volunteered to teach primary school students in rural part of China for a month. This experience of interacting with kids inspires her to be a good teacher in the future! In the past two years, she has volunteered to teach kindergarten kids about some basic Food & Nutrition knowledge as well as doing Nutrition workshops with Secondary school students. She loves teaching and interacting with kids because she feels rewarding by seeing children’s smiling faces in her class. She is also interested in DIY handmade things, such as paper cutting and textiles. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, and cooking.
Anna-Joy Ong
Anna-Joy is a third-year undergraduate student majoring Food, Nutrition, and Health. Apart from good food and the occasional latte, she is passionate about therapeutic horseback riding and volunteering at a barn for 4 years through which she got work with kids and adults of all ages. She has always loved travelling and learning about other cultures. She is currently exploring future career options that will allow her to interact with people who have not had access to adequate food and/or nutrition knowledge!
Odette Hobbis
Odette is a third-year student in Applied Plant and Soil Science. She grew up on Vancouver Island and comes from a sailing eco-tourism family background where she spends most of her youth on the central coast exploring Haida Gwaii and the Great Bear Rainforest/Alaska with her family and guests on a traditional wooden sailboat. Odette has had extensive exposure to Haida culture and peoples. She values BCs traditional heritage and has an interest in First Nations cultural pride and reconciliation. As a youth, she participated in a program called Rediscovery in Gwaii Hannas which attempts to re-connect Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth to their land and native culture. Odette also has experience working as a crew member, shore guide and cook aboard her families vessel where they run youth environmental education trips for Calgary school board students ages 13-15. Upon graduating high school Odette has travelled throughout Europe and SE Asia, volunteering on farms for several months in the South of France. Odette has an educational interest in agriculture because she sees this as a field that uniquely connects the environment, plants and people in an educational setting. She spent one year studying Agriculture at the University of Guelph in Ontario, and one semester at Kwantlen in a sustainable agriculture program before she decided to settle at UBC. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, the outdoors, the arts, occasionally sailing and playing sports.
Carolina Duque
Carolina (also known as Azul) is a full-time story-teller, a forest biker, and a ukulele player. In her free time, she is a student in the faculty of Land and Food Systems majoring in Global Resource Systems. She has a big passion for theatre, math, nature and youth.
She was born and raised in Colombia where she started a non-profit organization that worked with terminally-ill children in rural areas of the country. She has also worked with at-risk youth from slums in permaculture projects to build capacity and community.
One of her favourite places in the world is the Amazon rainforest, where she has spent time living among indigenous communities learning from plant teachers. She is intrigued by the way in which the eco-pedagogies she has learned in the Amazon can translate to the orthodox classroom to transform the way children learn and connect with mother nature. She also loves drinking wine, dancing salsa, and a good sense of humour.
James Broekhuysen
James is a 3rd-year plant and soil science major in applied biology. He is very passionate about reducing pesticide and synthetic fertilizer use on farms by using agroecological principles. He has experience working on organic farms and grows an organic garden at his family’s home in the Fraser Valley. Recently he has sparked an interest in medicinal values of plants that he plans to explore more. When James isn’t thinking about plants, he is usually running or hiking, yes, among more plants.