Once again, we experience one of those semesters where we end up asking ourselves “where did the time go?” It feels like yesterday when we were just put into our groups and receiving which community project we would be serving for the semester. Now here we are, with the school year coming to a close and our work for the Breakfast Club of Canada well on its way to completion. We have collaborated strongly in our group over the past three months in order to provide valuable outcomes. Before we move on, we would like to say farewell, as this is our last blog with you. We hope that through our blogs, our progress and growth has been evident and enhanced.
In Canada, one quarter of students under the age of fifteen report going to school without having eaten breakfast (BCC, 2016). Findings such as these indicate the importance of providing a sustainable solution that will allow children to go to school on a full stomach. This is what the Breakfast Club of Canada (BCC), a non-profit organization, is doing through their school programs by increasing access to free, nutritious breakfasts to students across Canada.
This semester, our group has been working alongside Robin, our community partner with the BCC, to develop new, creative recipes, compare nutrition and costs of select cereals, yogurts, and breads at three major grocery stores, to expand their essential food items list, and to create a list of tips for bulk food preparation. By observing a breakfast program, we have been able to recognize the impact the BCC has on students and their families first-hand, however we recognize that most schools face various obstacles towards creating fully effective systems, a problem which we are trying to help resolve. As we began our project, we had a number of questions about the completion of our project:
1) How were we going to develop new recipes that were creative and different from the previous term’s work, cost effective, and included ingredients from the expanded essential food items list?
2) How were we going to effectively collect data for nutrition and cost analysis of cereals, yogurts, and breads?
3) How would we collect information for bulk food preparation tips and complete all objectives in the allotted time frame?
Our group started by replacing a number of recipes created by the previous term with newly developed and creative recipes. We reviewed all creations to ensure each one included at least one ingredient from the food items list we had expanded. Next, we visited Superstore, Safeway, and Costco and compared the nutrition tables and cost per 100g of three food items to rank the various products. Lastly, we reviewed online sources and personal experience to compile a list of tips for cooking in bulk.
We would recommend for the BCC to collect more data on which recipes are most commonly used and which are most popular so that new recipes can follow these trends. Additionally, we would encourage the BCC to work towards developing local community food partnerships to engage community stakeholders and to increase access to locally sourced affordable ingredients.
Moment of Significance
What: A moment of significance for our group was achieving all of our objectives. From the time we finalized our objective-completion timeline, we have been striving to produce quality work that is beneficial for the use by the Breakfast Club of Canada. Getting our objectives done well would require an adequate amount of time, and in order to balance it with our other school work, our schedule required that we finish an objective almost every week. Yet as the weeks quickly approached, we found ourselves lagging behind in completing our objectives. They were not forgotten, as they were all started; but all needed a good, hard push through in order to complete each one. One of our objectives required gathering data on price and nutrition of popular food brands. Once we had collected the data, we realized that bulk items were more cost-efficient for the Breakfast Club of Canada and as a result, we had to go back to the stores to gather the information on bulk items as opposed to smaller proportioned foods. As we approached the end of the semester, the urge to complete our objectives drastically rose as we began to feel the pressure of getting the tasks completed. After setting up more deadlines for ourselves, we were better able to get a grasp of what was still needed to be done and what was so far successful. Furthermore, contact with our community partner Robin allowed us to receive insight on what he approved, and what could be done to make the objectives more coherent and relevant to the Breakfast Club. With 2 weeks left into our presentation, we were able to complete our objectives. This is our moment of significance because it is a point where we are content with our work, and something we can be proud of. By completing our objectives below,
- Increase efficiency of cooking in bulk.
- Create additional essential food items.
- Compare brands for nutritional value and cost for three essential food items.
- Improve past recipes and offer new recipes.
we were then able to move on to working on our final project report and presentation.
So what: Our moment of significance is when our objectives were all completed. This is because the work we put into researching and coming up with improved, interesting recipes was finally complete, and our efforts were put into useful knowledge that can be utilized by programs across the country. In addition, we made sure our results would be beneficial to the Breakfast Club by ensuring our work was top-notch. For example, we were not satisfied with the results from our data collection from grocery stores, which led to us go back to the stores to regather more applicable information. This was important to us because it allowed us to produce better results as well as work that we can be proud of procuring. Completing our objectives is a milestone because it marks the point in our community project where our results can start to come together to form the final delivered product to our community partners and members. By completing our objectives properly, we are able to provide the Breakfast Club of Canada with information which can be incorporated into their programs. From the completed objectives, we are now able to move onto our final stage of our community project, which is to create our final presentation and report.
What now: Finalizing our objectives allows us to move onto the most vital and final stage of our community project. This is where we gather all of the data we have collected and bring it together in order to present it to our class and community partner. As we start to prepare our final report and presentation, we are faced with how we should display our results so that they are effectively understood and aesthetically pleasing. Also, we need to remain in close contact with Robin, as he wishes to see a good draft before we finalize the details. This will ensure that our work for him is up to his standards and representable both of UBC and the Breakfast Club of Canada. It is important that as the end of the semester progresses, we work hard and remain communicative within our group so that our final tasks are completed on time with minimal conflict. We hope our results will positively affect the Breakfast Club of Canada.
Reference:
Breakfast Club of Canada. (2016) Retrieved on March 1, 2016 from http://www.breakfastclubcanada.org/
