The World in a Garden, is the community partner that my group, group 21, has worked with for the CBL project. This post, is very different than my regular “themed” posts where I draw a groups project to a certain theme, the reason this post is a “themeless” post is because, from my perspective, the CBL project is too multifaceted and can’t be defined by a single theme.
Group 21, was responsible for a variety of tasks, primarily with creating and conducting a survey for TWIAG to better understand the knowledge level and needs of the community. The survey created by group 21 initially focused more on assessing community nutritional knowledge, but went through several revisions to better meet the needs of TWIAG. The survey added questions that gave participants open-ended questions to gain a bigger insight to what the community wanted to know about. With the knowledge TWIAG would be able to offer workshops and other resources that would be more custom tailored for the needs of the community. The TWIAG survey was pilot tested at a TWIAG event in which members of group 21 volunteered at. The results were quite varied and were interesting as they showed variation in the knowledge that community had of food, as well as the communities interests. In the end, group 21 took the first few steps in creating a survey that could be used in the future on a larger scale. It is presumed that the survey may go under further revisions and be posted on the TWIAG website and used in other ways to further understand the demographics that TWIAG is serving.Aside from the survey, group 21 also volunteered their time on a Saturday to help out with TWIAG’s variety events. The group laboured in the rainy weather moving items and were able to have “fun” in the experience as well as further understand TWIAG and their variety of services. The evening went to the pilot testing of surveys to mostly high school students who came to attend a workshop. Overall, a member a group 21 said “it was a fun time…”. The combination of the survey development and volunteerism amazingly have many long lasting effects on the members of the group and community as a whole.
Group picture at TWIAG
Members of group 21, have been given the valuable opportunity to independently communicate with community partners and develop requested projects. Survey making and analysis skills will prove useful to many group members in the future of their academic pursuits. In terms of the community, group 21, through volunteerism has boosted contributed to boosting community awareness about TWIAG as well as possibly create a tool (the survey) that will influence the development of all future TWIAG programs. In the end, group 21, leaves with a feeling of satisfaction and knowing that future LFS 350 groups can pick up where they left off and further revise and implement the survey at TWIAG.
