We are now halfway through the course. As we are making food asset map videos in English, Mandarin and Cantonese for the community, our goal is to educate individuals on how to effectively use the map.

Here is the proposal of our project:

LFS350 Proposal

Weekly Objectives and Achievements

Week 1

Objectives:

–          Choose a project that we are interested in and sign up for it

Achievements:

–          Students picked top three projects from the community projects list based on their strengths

Week 2

Objectives:

–          Meet with group members and have a basic understanding about the project after the introduction by our TA

Achievements:

–          Shared information such as habits, major and contact

–          Identified each other’s strengths and assigned tasks for individuals

–          Created a Chat room as our main form of communication

Week 3

Objectives:

–          Started to write blog post one

–          Meet with our community partner Teya from Vancouver Coastal Health

Achievements:

–          Our community partner provided many detailed instructions which allowed us to  have a better understanding of our roles

–          Based on all team members’ opinions, we successfully completed blog post one  

Week 4

Objectives:

–            Discuss the project proposal and assign different sections of the proposal for each individual

Achievements:

–          Classified our project aim and objectives

–          Wrote a draft proposal and waited for feedback

Week 5

Objectives:

–          Revise the group proposal according to the feedback

Achievements:

–          Completed a well-written project proposal on time

Week 6

Objectives:

–          Arrange a meeting with the computer technician to ask questions about the video software that we are using

Achievements:

–          Received a response from the technician, who recommended several software for us to use

–          Group decided to use the multi-functioned software, Camtasia

What?

The population growth in Vancouver has been increasing steadily due to the increase of immigration to the city. With that in mind, food security needs to be ensured to the new immigrants as well. Therefore, Vancouver Coastal Health, UBC and our community partners created a food assets map. The food assets map is a relatively new tool that helps people allocate, buy, prepare and receive food. To increase the number of users of the food assets map, our strategy is to create an instructional video in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

While making this video, we also have the chance to meet with one of the computer technicians from UBC to gain more knowledge about video filming techniques, such as vivid voiceover, classic animation and abundant pictures.

So what?

By making videos in three different languages, we hope that this tool can reach out to people who are more comfortable using Mandarin and Cantonese. It is important to recognize Vancouver’s diversity and our project helps to accomplish this bridging the gap between the Chinese community and the rest of Vancouver’s population.

Now what?

Ernesto Sirolli (2012) states that listening and working with different community members can achieve success. With knowledge from the technician and community partners, we are currently in the process of filming a convincing, yet educational video. As we are continuing to work on our project, our goal is to make our video easy to use and follow. In addition, we want to be able to show people how to use the food assets map in order to make the map a useful tool in their lives. We also hope to receive feedback from our community partners to test the effectiveness of our videos.

Upcoming Objectives:

Week 7

Objectives:

–          Filming the video and voiceover

Strategies:

–          Insert some pictures to make the video more appealing and engaging

–          Read the script with more emotion to avoid being monotone

Week 8

Objectives:

–          Edit the video

Strategies:

–          Use knowledge learned from technician and apply it to our editing

Week 9

Objectives:

–          Play the video to community partners

Strategies:

–          Receive constructive feedback and make changes to the video

Week 10

Objectives:

–          Write a report on the video making process

Strategies:

–           Recall video making process and discuss results, implications and improvements

References:

Siroli, E. (2012, November 26). Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM

Hi, welcome to our blog!

First, we’d like to introduce ourselves.

Stephani Fan: A third-year student in Food, Nutrition and Health program; interests: photography and hiking.

Imogen Li: A third-year student in Food, Nutrition and Health program; interests: cooking and yoga.

Irene Cao: A third-year student in Nutritional Sciences program; interest: reading novels.

Renee Huang: A third-year student in Food, Nutrition and Health program; interest: playing badminton.

Travis Lam: A third-year student in Food Market Analysis program; interest: playing basketball.

Manessa Man: A third-year student in Food Market Analysis Program; interests: traveling to experience different cultures and food, and baking.

The project: Vancouver Food Asset Map – Multi-Language How-to Video

If you ask me to use one word to describe Vancouver, “diversity” would be the first one that comes to my mind. Food is diverse in Vancouver. It is not so hard to find burritos, sushi and grilled steak on the same street.  So are the languages. If you get on a bus, you can always hear someone speaking in a language other than English. Unfortunately, the diversity also reflects in living conditions. Some people enjoy nutritious meals every day, while some people constantly struggle with food insecurities.

We are a group of people who are passionate about food as well as food justice and food securities. Through the course LFS350, it is very fortunate for us to pair up with the dietitians from Vancouver Coastal Health to make a short how-to video for Vancouver Food Asset Map. Vancouver Food Asset Map is a useful tool which helps people living in Vancouver find food assets in their communities. Considering that Chinese makes up a big portion of Vancouver population, we are going to make a video in Mandarin as well.

Objectives

1. We would like to learn from the dietitians how to plan and carry out a large-scale project.
2. It is also very important for us to reach out to communities so that we can better understand the disadvantages and advantages of Vancouver system. We strongly agree with the concept of asset-based community development. Instead of posing ourselves as experts, we want to be listeners and servers in the community (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). People in the community eat and have to eat. They already know a lot of ways to find food assets so we can learn from their successful experience and perfect the map.
3. Through the process of interacting with dietitians and our community partners, we hope that the videos we make will provide food access for more people, especially who are Chinese from low-income families and having difficulty understanding English.
4. Introduce the concept of Vancouver Food Asset Map to the public and educate people how to utilize it.
5. Improve and update the Vancouver Food Asset Map constantly.

First Impressions

During this Tuesday, we had our first meeting with the dietitians Teya Stephens and Kathy Romes, from the Vancouver Coastal Health. They introduced us to the project of Vancouver Food Asset Map and would provide support throughout the process of the project. We all feel confident and excited, and can’t wait to start this project. In addition, the video that we make will be released in the community. As Ernesto Sirolli mentioned in the video, “sit[ing] with the local people” is the best way to target the key problem and improve the project because no one better than the community members themselves know what their real struggles are (Sirolli, 2012). By gathering their responses, we can know what difficulties they have on obtaining food assets or understanding the video. It enables us to improve the video to suite their needs. At the end, as parts of the Vancouver communities, the main goal that we participate in that project is that people can learn more about the Food Asset Map and utilize it in the daily life to promote a healthy eating lifestyle.

References:

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. doi:10.1080/0961452032000125857

Sirolli, E. (2012, September). Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! Speech presented at Ted Talk. Retrieved January 25, 2017.