September 2016

Beginnings

A little bit about us, 

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(from left to right)

Tony Guang, Global Resource Systems Major, Food and Resource Economics Specialization

Sarah Walters, Food Nutrition and Health Major : Interested in helping others through nutrition and lifestyle changes.

Yi-Min Ng, Nutritional Sciences Major : Interested in human nutrition and preventive care. Occasionally, she loves to go on hikes around BC and explore interesting places.

Yueyue(Shelley) Shi, Food Nutrition and Health Major : I’m interested in nutrition of food, and the process of food, food engineering. I’d like to plan a healthy diet, and go for yoga sometimes.

Yang (Cherry) Yang,  Food Nutrition and Health Major : Interested in studying the impact of lacking a specific vitamin/mineral, nutritional values of different foods and different food productions.

Hou-Han (Peter) Tseng, Plant and Soil Science Major :  Interested in the impact of current biotechnology on food production and food safety, as well as the effect of soil environment on plant growth.

 

Interests, Goals and Experience

As a group made up of students from the Land and Food System Faculty, we all have a similar interest in how our community interacts with the food system. The Legion was many of our group member’s first choice as a project because we are interested in learning more about the food services a Legion provides and how it can have an impact on food security and public health. We hope that our experiences in this project will allow us to become more aware of the needs of our community and more skilled in finding out how those needs can be met. By participating in this community based research, we hope to gain a better understanding of an institutional food system through engaging with community stakeholders. We also hope to learn how to identify food assets and use this knowledge to develop the asset-based community. Our contributions will hopefully help improve the Legion’s stance on serving not only Canada’s veterans but also their local communities.

 

Project Objectives

Our objective for the project is to determine and expand community food assets provided by the Legion. We will provide resources to the Legion so they can lead in a community driven asset-based development and we will help build more relationships between the Legion and its community.

 

Community Organization

The Royal Canadian Legion supports veterans and the community by hosting events and community nights and providing financial assistance. The Legion’s demographic is mostly seniors, with a total of 300,000 members across Canada. The Legion that we will be working with is Legion Branch 044 in East Vancouver.

 

First Impressions

Most of our group members had never been to a Legion before our class visit at the West Point Grey Legion. We did not know what connections Legions have with their community until we listened to the manager of this branch talk about what they do for the community and who supports them. We were surprised by how much the Legion gives to help others and how they receive donations from places such as Safeway, who teams up with the Legion to provide vouchers for those with emergency and financial needs.

We learned about our particular Legion (044) by calling the branch to see what time they are open, in the hopes that we could go to the Legion and learn about it, just by participating as a member would. This phone call helped us learn about our particular Legion because we were told that it does not have a kitchen or a bar. This is similar to how Sirolli in the Ted Talk talked about taking part in the community in an informal setting. By gaining knowledge about the Legion before we meet with the staff on a formal setting, we are able to direct our questions to make our communication with them more relevant.

In the Ted Talk, Sirolli talks about going into the community and developing a relationship with the experts and professionals, who understand their community better than any foreigner. When we met the manager of the West Point Grey Legion, he mentioned the community events they host such as barbeques and meat draws for the public. Most of their profit from these events goes to charity. He talked about how the Legion is open to support any organization doing a good cause.

The community built around the legion is definitely an important asset to the development of change in the neighbourhood. These community connections are crucial in mobilizing and obtaining other assets in the community. Community development would not be possible without the help of other organizations to provide information and resources.

Following the principles of Asset-Based Community Development by Mathie and Cunningham, the legion is already contributing to community growth. It has a foundation in the community through sharing of achievements, having motivated individuals to better the community and building strong relationships with other organizations. With further analysis, our group would help out with mapping the community assets, building more relationships and leveraging more resources.