We used (Rolfe et al.’s 2001) reflective model where it is based upon 3 questions “What? So What? Now What?” to describe a moment of significance that has occurred in the course.

What

 Over this week, members of our team worked together on the Infographic. Our group split up the work equally, but we found that the Infographic was too long after we put up individual’s work together. Hence, we decided to shorten the Infographic into one page by focusing on the key points. This specific task provided our team an opportunity to collaborate as a team instead of combining individuals’ work without efficient communication. We also reflected on the five components such as Identity, Scoping, Select, Write and Sketch while developing our infographic (Session 10 – Developing Infographics | Land, Food + Community || (LFS 350), 2016).

So What

 Unlike previous assignments, the Infographic is a “graphic depiction of complex information” and “relies upon visual elements to clearly and concisely communicate complex information to diverse audiences” (Session 10 – Developing Infographics | Land, Food + Community || (LFS 350), 2016).  This suggests that a complete infographic must involve group discussion to condense and possibly simplify the informations from each group member’s work while avoiding similar contents from collapsing. However, there was always opinion differentiation during group discussion. In this kind of situation, a group leader equipped with communication skill and leadership was required to gather opinions from each team member and incorporate the best of those into the final project. Additionally, since we have a culturally diverse group, during the group discussion, we learned that diversity “is important for reducing bias and providing different ways of looking at the [project]” (Medin et al., 2014). Members from different cultures had contributed to different suggestions from different perceptions, resulting in a well-rounded infographic that could be presented to audiences from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, this experience allowed us to understand the significance of group communication, leadership, as well as cooperation between individuals from different cultures.

Now What

 Now, we have successfully completed the Infographic as required. However, to further improve the result to be used for the final presentation, we hope to ensure the presenters to fully understand the entire Infographic and to be well prepared and confident while presenting.

References

Bang, D. M., Carol D., & Lee, M. (2014). Point of View Affects How Science Is Done.      Scientific American. From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/point-of-view-affects-how-science-is-done/

Session 10 – Developing Infographics | Land, Food + Community || (LFS 350). (2016).   Lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca. Retrieved from: http://lfs350.landfood.ubc.ca/session-notes/term-1-session-notes/session-10/

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Retrieved from:

http://my.cumbria.ac.uk/Public/LISS/Documents/skillsatcumbria/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

Articulate your Weekly Objectives and Achievements

We had successfully met with our Community Partner on October the 26th, as planned. The president of Legion T.V, Peter Marola, was kind enough to sit down and have a meeting with us to explain the history of this particular Legion and its internal processes. As the meeting progressed, we explained to Peter Marola what the intentions of our research project was. Through our discussion with Mr. Marola, we were trying to gauge if any of the organizational goals of his Legion would coincide with the Vancouver Food Strategy, so that further collaboration may happen within a community food system framework, and if the Legion was open to asset based community development.

After our discussion, the President had made it clear to us that to his organization the notion of food security and food justice is important, however that his business is purely within the financial realm. The support for the community and their members reach beyond the local region. This is important, as listening to the community partner and their needs, and making sure they are not imposed on is much more essential. In terms of achieving our weekly goals, such meeting with the community partner, and establishing an understanding of what their organizational goals are, we have succeeded. We now know that their organizational goals at the moment do not match those of the Vancouver Food Strategy, nor are they open to Asset Based Community Development within their branch. However, we learned that this Legion does use the food made through their kitchen infrastructure and the food from restaurant donations to serve food to their community members during events. After the meeting, the President gave us a tour of the facilities, and we were also free to roam and observe. Our next objective is to analyze the Legion branch physically as a food asset, in terms of infrastructure and land-space utilized. Although the President made it clear that their goals do not align, however we can still process the data and give a report for future reference.

Describe and reflect on your group’s Moment of Significant Change workshop from tutorial session (include an image of the graphs your group created).

Since this project started, our group has been through a lot of ups and downs. We are thankful for the Moment of Significant Change workshop because it not only helped us reflect on our actions throughout the course but it also allowed us to collaboratively come up with ways to move forward.

At the beginning of the course, our knowledge on the background information and theories for our project were very minimal, as shown in our graph. We were familiar with terms such as food sovereignty and food security from our previous Land and Food Systems classes. However, we did not know what approaches to use in order to deal with issues such as these. This made it difficult for our group to understand what was expected of us in order to accomplish our community-based project. We overcame this block in knowledge when we learned about concepts such as Asset-Based Community Development through our class readings. Mathie mentioned in their paper about assest based community development (ABCD) that there are no clear guidelines to ABCD but one of the more important points is to “collect stories of community successes of the past and analyse the reasons for success” (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003).  With our new knowledge of Asset-Based Community Development, we feel confident that this approach will be able to make an impact in a community, especially in working towards solving issues such as food security.

Having inspiring guest speakers teach our class about important issues has enhanced our group members’ passion for helping our community. One of the speakers that stood out the most for our group was Julian Napolean. As a member of the Dane-zaa Nation, located in the Peace River region of British Columbia, Julian has witnessed and felt the impact of colonization that his community constantly faces.  For example, one of our group members, Sarah, has lived in BC her whole life and was shocked to hear about the problems that Indigenous people face, especially since the land that she lives on was once their land. Hearing about Julian’s person stories with these issues made Sarah realize the significance of trying to help protect their land and their culture.

Interviewing the President of the legion, Peter Marola, not only helped us learn a lot about the Legion but it also was a great learning experience for our group members in regards to the interview process. We were surprised by how much new information we acquired during the interview even though we had done research beforehand. Interviewing allowed us to get information that we would never have been able to find online, such as the specific organizations that the Legion has donated to. To prepare for the interview, we had printed out a list of questions to ask the Peter Marola, however during the interview we realized the importance of going over what the purpose of the interview with the interviewee. Since we did not prepare something to say to familiarize the interviewee with our project’s goals, we had to improvise. Dan Barber’s story on This American Life, on his failed attempts to replicate a way to make foie gras in a different environment made us feel a little better about adapting to changes (Glass, 2011). Things do not always go as planned, therefore we must be able to accept that and think quickly on how to move on. We were able to explain the project to Peter Marola, however we now know that if we ever have to interview someone in the future that it would be helpful to come with this prepared. We were very grateful to interview the President of the Legion since he was very knowledgeable about the Legion and we learned how talking to an expert is a great way to learn more about a topic.

Our group dynamic improved over time. When we started working on the project, we did not know each other very well and therefore could not assess each other’s strengths and weaknesses. After working with each other, we figured out how to collaborate effectively. For example, for our first blog post, we did not assign someone to be the editor nor did we set a timeslot to edit what we wrote – this gave us little time to edit and we felt rushed. Remembering a quote from our reading,  “Without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs” (Shulman, 2005, p. 18). We took this to heart and sought new ways to improve. We decided to finish our individual portions by a deadline and assigned one person to review leaving enough time for everyone to go back and fix their errors. We plan to keep learning from our mistakes and continue to communicate with each other so that we can not only achieve the best project outcome but also gain teamworking skills.

Describe your groups strategy for successful project completion (the Graceful Dismount).

In terms of the graceful dismount, our group’s strategies for successful project completion are to work together to clarify and analyze the notes that we got from our interview at the Legion and to ensure that each of group members understands the information collected. During the interview, we had two members asking questions, one person voice recorded the interviewee and everyone else took notes to ensure that no important information was missed. To gain further knowledge about the Legion, we will research and do an archived analysis. We will then summarize our data, which will help us under the concept and theories even more. We will also be meeting as a group more frequently in order to have a better communication between group members. This will enable us to make sure that our group members will contribute an equal amount to the project. Furthermore, we will continue to use Slack, which is a messaging app, in order to ensure everyone is on track with their tasks. Through increased amount of communication, members can help each other solve individual difficulties with the project and we will be able to make sure our everyone is aware of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. Communication also allows us to use the diverse opinions and ideas that our group members can offer. We believe that better communication and equal work distribution will improve collaboration and will greatly contribute to making a successful project.

References

Glass, I. (2011). 452. Poultry Slam 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2016, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3#play

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.

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

Project Proposal + Progress

1. Post a PDF of your project proposal
2. Articulate your Weekly Objectives and Achievements
3. Using the What, So What, Now What framework, reflect on a moment of significance that has occurred in the course so far.
4. Identify upcoming objectives and strategies to achieve them.

1. lfs-group-6-proposal

Weekly Objects: 8 Weeks

Week 1: October 10-15

– create an assessment outline and interview questions

– Contact legion

Week 2: October 17-22

• review project progress

Week 3 October 24-29

• visit Vancouver Royal Legion Branch 44
• record any kitchen infrastructures they may have
• interview the manager with the questionnaire we have prepared

Week 4 October 31 – November 5

• review project progression
• discuss project key findings
• work on and complete group blog posting #3

Week 5 November 7-12

• develop a infographic for the project

Week 6 November 14-19

• review project progression
• work on final report/presentation

Week 7 November 21-26

• complete group blog posting #4
• complete project infographic and ppt slides for the final presentation
• begin practicing for the final presentation
• work on final project report ( at the time, the report should be about finished)

Week 8 November 28 – December 3

• complete and submit final project report

2. In terms of achieving this week’s objectives, we submitted our Project Proposal. We have also created a draft of potential interview questions that we ideally would like to ask when we meet with our Community Partner. In terms of achievements this week, our group member, Sarah, has successfully contacted our Legion branch and have made an appointment for our group to visit on October 26 – we believe that we are making good progress towards building a lasting relationship with our Community Partner. As mentioned in our first blog post, our Legion does not have a kitchen nor bar; despite the absence of a kitchen, we believe that this may give us a better opportunity to think outside-of-the-box in terms of identifying assets outside of kitchen infrastructure. Our intended objectives of our upcoming weeks are to be tentative, as the inner workings of our Legion is still unclear to us, and we hope that objectives that are specifically tailored to our community partner will better serve the purpose of our research.

3. We used (Rolfe et al.’s, 2011) reflective model where it is based upon 3 questions What? So what? Now what? to describe a moment of significance in this course so far for us. This model helped us reflect on our observations (What?), and how that resulted in our actions (So What?) and how we should move on from this situation (Now What?).

Over the week, members of our group worked together to develop an outline of what we should discuss Legion over the phone in order for us to determine if we could meet with them. We were able to contact the Legion, however the person who spoke with us on the phone, the Secretary, did not think the Legion would be of any interest to us since it is a “dry” Legion that does not have a kitchen or a bar. She wanted to help us by redirecting our project to a location that has more to offer to the public. However, she mentioned that the Legion at this location has an annual Rememberance Day Event that fundraises money for the community. This information allowed us to reassure her that our group was still interested in learning more about this particular Legion. Without this information, it would have been difficult for us to let them know why we were interested in their Legion for our project since it is not open to the public.

Letting the Secretary know why we are interested in the Legion for the project, despite the fact that it is a “dry” Legion, was a very important step. The Secretary is the person who will pass our information on to the Director of the Legion, therefore we needed to convince her that we were interested in their Legion more than the other ones. When the Secretary understood our interest in their particular Legion, she was very amiable in helping us set up a meeting with the Director of the Legion.This taught us the importance of not giving up right away,  when we we could have when the Secretary told us that the Legion was not a good option for us and didn’t understand why we would be interested. We were reminded about what Mathie mentioned in their paper about assest based community development (ABCD) that there are no clear guidelines to ABCD but one of the more important points is to “collect stories of community successes of the past and analyse the reasons for success” (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). This helped us focus on the Legon’s highlights by asking questions about what the Legion offers to their members, giving us a window of oppritunity to express our interest in a way that is understandable to the Secretary.

Now that we have successfully completely the phone call, we have the possibility of meeting with the Director because the Secretary will tell her about our group and the day and time that we are interested to meet. We may encounter more obstacles before we are able to have our first meeting, however we will now be more prepared to handle these situations because of our experience over the phone with the Secretary. If the Director of the Legion is hesitant to meet with us, we can try our best to explain to her why we are interested in their particular Legion and how it connects to our projectIn the Podcast, the author talks about stigmatism in failure and how we should not be afraid to quit. Quitting does not mean giving up but realising a method does not work anymore and changing to a new one immediately. Similarly, we will continue to insipire confidence in our Legion to gain the trust we need to work together. We will also have more confidence approaching new situations knowing that we were able to work through the first one and have a positive outcome. We are not afraid to fail as similar to what McDonald’s story conveyed, failure can be a learning curve because without failure, we would have the arrongance we shouldn’t have (“Failure Is Your Friend: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast – Freakonomics”, 2014). We will “fail quickly so that we have more chances of failing until we find a way” to enhance the Legion’s assests for community based development in the area (“Failure Is Your Friend: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast – Freakonomics”, 2014). McDonald talks about how NASA was too proud to postpone the date again for their take off as they have come a long way in space travel, even though the engineers advised against it, they still launched the rocket and it failed, causing their first fatal casualty (“Failure Is Your Friend: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast – Freakonomics”, 2014). From this story, we were able to learn the importance of change and patience in order to have the best outcome from this project.

4. Our next objective will be to finalize the consent forms, and our interview questions. It is imperative that we recieve a response from the secretary of Legion 44, and also reply in a timely manner. Interview questions would be used as a tool to collect useful information regarding physical food or social capital that may be used in Asset Based Community Development. As a group we have agreed, that aproaching this project in the most ethical way is of the utmost importance due to the sensitive nature of our Community Partner’s services, we hope to achieve this by consulting with Legion staff on the nature of our survey questions to members, and having informed consent given, by clearly stating what the information is used for, and strict anonimty and confidentiality will be kept following what we have all learned from the TCPS CORE Module. Although we are aware that our specific Legion does not contain a kitchen, we hope that proper analysis of their enviroment may yield insight into any possible assets that the Legion may utilitize better towards community development, whether it would be in the indirect form of ‘food assets’  as outlined in the Vancouver Food Strategy (2013) via ‘social capital’ through member/community and relationships (Mathie, 2013). For example: (1) Emphasize collaboration and partnerships, (2) Creating neighbourhood based venues … to enable community articipation in food system activities. (Vancouver Food Strategy 2013) As any future community development needs to happen collaboratively with all levels of stakeholders within the area serviced.

.

References:

Freakonomics. Retrieved 14 October 2016, from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

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.

About us:

We are a group of UBC students who are a part of the Land and Food Systems faculty and are currently enrolled in the LFS 350 class.

We want to introduce you to our individual members and how our experience and interests have lead us to a group project on a Legion:

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

Tony’s area of study lies in Social Development, and Economical Sustainability. As a Global Resource systems student, he is interested in the interactions and relationship between human civilization and the natural environment that surrounds them. He is currently a freelance photographer, with prior projects that include documenting the First Nations peoples protest over sovereignty in the Fraser River, and also, the story of the Maya in Exile Garden at the UBC Farm. Currently, he is working on is awareness work for Vancouver First Nations Health Society. As an organization that serves mainly the senior demographic in their communities, Tony is curious as to how the Legion addresses issues of food and community in their respective branches.

• Yi-Min Ng, Nutritional Sciences Major

She is interested in human nutrition and preventive care. As a nutrition student, she is interested in learning more about accessibility to affordable nutritious food and how it can it can be improved. Yi-Min volunteers at St Paul’s Hospital and is learning about urban health. The Legion is doing its part in the community to help those with food security issues and she is very keen on learning how to help elevate urban health issues through the Legion.

• Hou-Han (Peter) Tseng, Plant and Soil Science Major

Peter is interested in the impact of current biotechnology on food production and food safety. He volunteers at Kitsilano Community Centre, and has helped setting up multiple community events. Those events often offer free food, especially for children. Therefore, with most members being the elderly at the Legion, which is completely opposite to Kitsilano Community Centre, Peter is looking forward to learning how food-related events are held at the Legion.

• Yang (Cherry) Yang,  Food Nutrition and Health Major

Cherry is interested in studying the nutrition values of different food. She took a cooking class at Vancouver Community College last year where she met a lot of people who shares her passion for food. She was able to apply what she learned in real life settings, such as cooking healthy food. She is interested in food nutrition and is looking forward to learn how the Legion provides nutritious food to the elders.

• Yueyue (Shelley) Shi, Food Nutrition and Health Major

Shelley is interested in nutrition of food, and the process of food, food engineering. She is a volunteering member of Canucks Autism Network (CAN), an organization which provides year-round activities for individuals, and families living with autism. She loves to join community organizations, and she would to love to learn more about how the Legion contribute to the community by assessing the food system of the Legion.

• Sarah Walters, Food Nutrition and Health Major:

Sarah is interested in helping others through nutrition and lifestyle changes. This passion has lead Sarah to study at UBC in the hopes of becoming a Registered Dietitian and seek experience in cooking class programs. Volunteering in kitchen settings has given Sarah the insight on how kitchens can provide nutritious meals for people and can be an enjoyable experience at the same time. Sarah believes that strengthening a kitchen asset, such as a Legion’s kitchen, and incorporating the community to make food is a great way to help solve food related issues.

Group interests, goals, reasons for choosing project, and what we wish to gain from our experiences in LFS 350:

As a trans disciplinary group of students from the Land and Food System Faculty, we felt that our common interests resided in our passion for food and the ability it has to bring community together. The Legion was the majority of our group member’s first choice as a project. We are interested in gaining more insight into the intricacies of the food system through the lens of a local community organization such as the Legion. Analysis of this organization using an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, will hopefully allow us to better identify community assets and understand community development (Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G.,2003). The City of Vancouver Food Strategy (2013) aims to increase the amount of food assets in the Vancouver by 50% by 2020. As Vancouver’s mission is to create a more “just and sustainable food system” (Vancouver Food Strategy, 2013), and as students we hope that our experiences in this project will allow us to become more adept at identifying assets to address organizational and societal needs to one day realize this goal. We believe that this experience will help us develop skills in working collaboratively as a team and will give us insight into ways that we can help an organization and approach problem-solving in a community.

Our project objectives and about the Legion:

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 branch that we will be working with is Royal Canadian Legion TV Branch 44.

After WWI, countless soldiers suffered from internal wounds that were not visible externally, in which 12000 veterans were treated for tuberculosis, a type of chest disability (Legion TVS 44, 2009). Without any financial aid from the Canadian government, those veterans formed the Tuberculous Veterans’ Association (TVA), aiming to provide support for the tuberculous veterans (Legion TVS 44, 2009). However, on October 1st, 1925, the TVA merged with Canadian Legion and became the Tuberculous Veterans’ Section (TVS) (Legion TVS 44, 2009). A year after, the Vancouver TV Royal Canadian Legion (Branch #44) was formed embracing the original goal when the TVA was developed (Legion TVS 44, 2009).

Figure 1: Source: Vancouver Food Strategy (2013)

Figure 2: Retrieved from: Vancouver Food Strategy (2013) pg. 25. This figure shows the location of food assets in Vancouver. This does not include some classifications of food assets such as major store chains and restaurants.

Figure 3: Retrieved from: Vancouver Food Strategy (2013). This figure shows the percentage of seniors in the population of different areas in Vancouver.

Upon comparing Figure 2 to Figure 3 above, it can be seen that in some areas where there are higher percentages of seniors, such as Marpole and Oakridge in South Vancouver, there are less community-based food assets. The development of local community food assets is crucial in developing resiliency in Vancouver’s food system (Vancouver Food Strategy 2013) and create lasting social change (Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G., 2013) in community development. With a disproportionate representation of physical food asset density to senior population density, questions can be raised about the fair accessibility of these food assets, especially in a demographic where transportation and mobility can be the largest inhibiting factor to accessibility (Kloppenborg, 2010).

Using this asset-based community development approach, we are interested in how a community organization, such as a Legion Branch, can further utilize community-based food and social assets, defined as: “resources, facilities, services or spaces that are available to Vancouver residents, and which are used to support the local food system” (Vancouver Food Strategy, 2013). We believe that this can help strengthen communities and their food systems, while meeting the Legion’s organizational needs at the same time.

We hope to gain a better understanding of a small part of the Vancouver food system by communicating with community stakeholders. The City of Vancouver has identified that the senior population is an at-risk demographic within this city to be food insecure (Vancouver Food Strategy, 2013; Kloppenborg, 2010), however with not much readily available data (Kloppenborg, 2010), this may be a great opportunity to explore questions and gather information that has never been looked at before. Our contributions will hopefully help improvements of the Legion’s stance on serving not only Canada’s veterans but also their local communities.

Our objective for the project is to analyze the institutional food system of the Legion by assessing the food storage, food preparation and waste disposal infrastructure. We will also assess what external food sources the Legion uses. We will inquire about the activities that the Legion provides and how many are food-related. Meanwhile, we will be looking for relationships between the Legion’s organizational goals and the community food assets as well as the link between Vancouver City goals and the Legion’s food assets. We hope to provide resources and knowledge to the Legion to help build a safe, food-friendly environment between the Legion and its community.

Our first impression:

Most of our group members had never been to a Legion before our class visit at the West Point Grey Legion (#142). We did not know what connections Legions have with their community until we listened to the respective branch manager speak about their community involvement and who supports them. We were surprised by the capacity to which Legions give to help others, and how they receive donations from organizations such as Safeway – whom sponsor the Legion in providing vouchers for those with extraordinary and/or financial needs. We were surprised to learned how this branch was downsizing due to increases in property taxes (up to $50,000/ year); this revealed to us that the Legion has to prioritize where they are budgeting their money.

We started our project by calling our assigned Legion Branch (044) in the Hastings- Sunrise neighbourhood, to ask about their opening hours. In the hopes that we could go to the Legion and learn more about it, as seen in (Fig. 1) the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood contains no community kitchen as a food asset, and this Legion would be a good place to start as the senior population is also above average, as indicated by (Fig. 2). This phone call would reveal to us that our particular Legion does not have a kitchen or a bar. Similar in Ernesto Sirolli’s Ted Talk: “ Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!” Sirolli talked about participating within the community in an informal setting. He highlights the importance of listening to the community; We are going to the Legion as ‘servants’ as he would call it, rather than outsiders with only theories and big ideas. We will be entering this project with an open mind and will help by providing resources and knowledge wherever it is needed by the Legion. By gaining knowledge about the Legion before we meet with the staff on a formal setting, we will be able to direct our questions to make our communication with them more relevant, and in doing so we bridge the gap from “clients to citizens” (Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G., 2013). Critical to this community development is building 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 helping veterans and their families. 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 social asset to the development of change in the neighbourhood (Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G., 2003). These community connections (social capital) are crucial in mobilizing and obtaining other assets in the community. Community development would not be possible without the help of other grassroots organizations to provide information and resources, but also in shifting power to decide their food system back to these communities (Allen, 2008; Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G., 2003)

Following the principles of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) by Mathie and Cunningham (2013), the Legion is already contributing to community growth. ABCD strives for a community development brought about by the people involved in the community with existing resources. According to Mathie and Cunningham, ABCD uses ‘social assets’ : “talented individuals, and the social capital inherent in the relationships that fuel local associations and informal events” (2013). It builds on a foundation in the community through the sharing of achievements, having motivated individuals to better the community and building strong relationships with other organizations. The Legion, thus is in a position where it can be the catalyst for change. By learning about the Legion in person, we can hear about the stories of successes that the Legion has had in the past, which is a method of community mobilisaton and is the initial step in asset-based community development (Mathie 2003). With further analysis, our group would help out with mapping the community assets  to show opportunities for building relationships (social asset) and leveraging more resources (physical assets). We will be facilitating a more community driven development as compared to a needs-based development.

Lastly, Patricia Allen’s mentions in her paper, “Mining for Justice In The Food System: Perceptions,Practices, and Possibilities”, describes how academics have an important role to play in community development, through the helping people understand the “power of discourse and ideology, opening up discussion of the meaning of individualism and its corollaries such as choice, merit, and blame.” (2008) This inspired in us, the confidence in our belief as university students, that we could help a community. An important note that Allen points out, is that without a specific focus on food justice, we might unknowingly create a ‘two -tiered food system’ where it creates a “marginalized, safe space” only for the privileged (Allen, 2008). However, he further explains to us, that as academics, once we realize that “social and ecological problems are the result of social choices, [we] will feel more empowered to participate in their resolution” (Allen, 2008). While we are working with the Legion to assess food and food related infrastructure, it is also important to engage with individuals within the Legion, in order to fully understand and implement ABCD. Thusly, the more we get to know the community, the more effective our presence in the Legion will be.

Works Cited:

Allen, P. (2008). Mining for justice in the food system: perceptions, practices, and possibilities. Agriculture and Human Values, 25(2), 157–161.

Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 1 October 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM

Kloppenborg, A. (2010, October 10). Seniors In Vancouver (Canada, Social Policy Division, City of Vancouver). Retrieved October 05, 2016, from http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Seniors-Backgrounder.pdf

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.

Pothukuchi, K., & Kaufman, J. L. (2000). The Food System. Journal of the American Planning Association, 66(2), 113-124. doi:10.1080/01944360008976093

“Royal Canadian Legion TVS Branch 44.” RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2016.

Social Policy Division, City of Vancouver (Kloppenborg, 2010)

A little bit about us, 

(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.