Reflection Upon a Moment of Significance:
What?
On Wednesday, November 16, 2016, we came together to meet Sarah Carten, the social planner of the Food Strategy Implementation team from the City of Vancouver Social Policy Department. After this meeting, we were able to learn about the similarities and differences between the Legions by sharing our experiences while working on this project. Interestingly, some groups shared similar struggles throughout this project, such as the lack of general knowledge regarding Legions, the absence of kitchen infrastructures at some Legion branches, as well as a the unwillingness of Legion member’s participation in food-related issues.
Sarah concluded the talk by mentioning Vancouver Food Strategy future plans with the information collected through the assessment. She mentioned how there is already a list of interested organizations and partners that are interested in renting the kitchen space at some Legions. One main requirement for a potential partnership with the city is the compliance of kitchen facilities to fire hazards and building bylaws.
Sarah confirmed that the Kitsilano Legion is not suitable for the City of Vancouver’s plan, as it is located in a residential area, which is one of the main reasons that it was not included in their plan originally.
So What?
We were able to assess the Kitsilano Legion’s kitchen for a possible partnership with different community organizations in the city; however, the Kitsilano Legion is unsuitable for the kind of partnership Sarah had in mind due to its location in a residential area.
After learning about this, we were devastated as all of our work is not likely to be useful for the city’s plans. However, after group discussion, we have come to the conclusion that even though our project may not be useful for the City’s plan, we have been able to determine the degree of usefulness of the kitchens and identify community opportunities that the Kitsilano Legion can offer. Even though a large-scale project with the city is not possible, they could still rent their kitchen and facilities for smaller scale community projects to take advantage of their assets. Recognizing the assets that the Legion offers, rather than what the Legion lacks (for example, the specific requirements for the City’s plan), is emphasized in the Asset-Based Community Development approach that we adopted from LFS 350.
Now What?
In “A Freakonomics Radio Podcast about Failure is Your Friend”, it described how we should have the confidence to accept failure and to learn how these experiences can present us with an opportunity to grow and learn from these experiences. Throughout the term, we ran into problems and uncertainties but we were able to learn from those mistakes and work with those. As we think back all the way to the beginning of the term, we have encountered problems that allowed us to grow and improve our thought process, which is analogous to what was mentioned by Tim Hardford in his video about how people working constantly under pressure and problems can improve their problem-solving skills.
Now that we have experienced some of the uncertainties of engaging with an organization in the community, we are more confident and flexible in dealing with uncertainties that may arise in the real world outside of a classroom. We enjoyed the process of engaging with community stakeholders and hope our work will be helpful in future community projects and developments.
Hope you enjoyed reading our blog posts!
