“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” – Sir Winston S. Churchill

This quote from Sir Winston S. Churchill spoke out to Group 14 as we transitioned from our project proposal into the planning and executing stage. In our partnership with HIM, we are being “offered a chance to a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents” as we recognize the range of food security challenges that the GB&OMSM community faces. In combination with their community challenges, the West End experiences a prevalence of food insecurity which includes a lack of affordability and accessibility to healthy and nutritious foods.

This is a unique situation that we hope to be able to sustain, as many community services targeted towards these individuals are severely missing in academia and real-world applications. Taking Churchill’s quote to heart, we must find ourselves prepared and qualified (according to HIM’s standards) in the finest of hours.


Group 14’s Project Proposal

Project Proposal Report


What are Group 14’s weekly objectives?

Since our last blog post, we have met with our community partner and we’re excited to report that we will be conducting an interview and participant survey to learn more about HIM and its acclaimed Rainbow Soup Social! We will primarily interview Josh, our community partner and HIM’s Knowledge Translation Manager, and Aaron, one of HIM’s program coordinators. The participant survey will be of a demographic nature, as we hope to be able to chart their ages and offer a more streamlined branding of promotional materials.

Our next objective is to formulate a list of interview questions to ask our community partner and the program coordinator at HIM. As a group, we will meet weekly in person to determine the length of the interview as well as to brainstorm appropriate questions to obtain significant qualitative data.

Following Reading Week, we hope to meet with Josh to continue developing the short but informative questionnaire to learn more about the participants of the social and their preferences. After analyzing the information, we will become more informed on how to create promotional materials and recipes that are appropriate for their brand.


What are Group 14’s achievements?

So far Group 14 has achieved the first few steps to completing our community project. We have met with our community partner to get a general idea of our project and created a formal relationship with HIM. Although we have yet to attend HIM’s Rainbow Soup Social, we have come up with some approaches to increasing community engagement such as creating various theme and cultural nights, as well as developing soup contests. We also suggest that HIM should expand their advertisement to all their satellite locations and through the Pride Collective at UBC with the purpose of appealing to a more diverse age group. For more information, please check out our Project Proposal Report which outlines our steps and goals in updating promotional material for HIM!


Moment of Significance: A Reflection

Following Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model, we are analyzing one of our significant moments so far in our journey through this LFS 350 community project. This is based upon a trio of questions helping to the reader understand our take on a difficult time in regard to being anxious to start making changes but being held back due to professionalism and formalities.

  • What?
    • Group 14’s moment of significance is the on-going battle against time, as we are currently stuck at the crossroads of a community project that lacks mobility. Through our internal planning sessions, we have developed a relatively detailed plan on numerous areas of interest at HIM. However, our implementation hopes are at a stand-still given the busyness of HIM’s daily responsibilities. We were recently informed of another key member of HIM, but unfortunately he is currently away from the office without a return date. Understanding this barrier, we were still optimistic on being able to achieve our goals within a reasonable time frame.
  • So What?
    • Taking inspiration from the feedback we received for our project proposal, there are areas that will need to be readjusted and reconsidered. Through our literary review and collection of background information on the GB&OMSM community and the local, national, and global initiatives available, we strayed from our goal of providing resources to foster community food security in ways that impact HIM participants. This is a classic case of reaching too far in an overly ambitious manner. As Carrie our supervising TA mentioned, we can re-group and focus on keeping our target(s) clean and clear. We can discuss the appropriateness angle (on the current and prospective ideas), their food literacy and food citizenship, as long as they consciously tie back into our main goals of significance.
    • In considering the scope and aims of our project, the tenets of Asset Based Community Development are of the utmost importance, especially that of appreciative inquiry (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). Clear and focused communication with HIM via interviews with program coordinators, other staff members and hopefully program participants will allow us to take stock of the people and resources that contribute to the success of the Rainbow Soup Social. In turn, this will allow our group to more effectively develop recipes and promotional materials that will compliment and enhance current and future program offerings.
  • Now What?
    • In order to learn more about HIM and its Rainbow Soup Social, as a group, we must come up with a list of revised and informative questions that we can ask Josh (and Aaron) at our upcoming meeting.
    • We hope to hear back from Josh shortly about a prospective date where we will attend the Rainbow Soup Social. We hope that we get a chance to connect with some of the participants to learn more about the community.
    • We had decided to collect data through surveying participants and interviewing some of HIM’s management team. However, we are still pondering if this data is significant or if it provides enough information to demonstrate the trends that reflect HIM’s Rainbow Soup Social. Regardless, we hope that through the updated promotional materials and recipe book, HIM will attract new and diverse participants to its Rainbow Soup Social.

What are Group 14’s upcoming objectives?

Our upcoming objectives will focus on adding the finishing touches to the survey. A copy will be forwarded to Josh to be reviewed by the program coordinating team. We anticipate that we will gain valuable feedback from them while staying within program policies and ethical considerations. Constructive feedback and recommendations were provided to us by Carrie, which encouraged us to look and explain how we will use the graphical summaries to enhance our promotional material ideas. Given Josh’s background with this course, it is extremely plausible that he will be pondering something similar, hence the importance of Carrie’s feedback and direction.

Next, we are aiming to make our visit to HIM to experience a Rainbow Soup Social within the next three weeks. Coordinating HIM’s availability with our group’s schedule has been a difficult task but we are optimistic that this situation will be resolved soon. We look forward to posting on our Pictorial Journey to allow our readers an opportunity to see the behind-the-scenes!


What are Group 14’s strategies to achieve these objectives?

At our next group meeting, we will discuss our take on transforming the potential graphical summaries into prospective promotional material. If that idea does not pan out as well as we anticipate, we will look into maximizing the impact of our background literary review. Having explored that in advance, we were able to witness the positive movements integrated into our society on a local, national, and global scale, but there is still much more to be done. Currently, it stands as a supplementary component of our community project, but it may become a core component of our project outlook if necessary.

To provide a visual, diverse perspective on our Pictorial Journey, we are planning to have each group member document their experiences when we visit HIM. However, conforming to the underlying principles of privacy and ethics, we will be selective when taking photos, including only the individuals who are group- or organization-related. A modified Informed Consent form will be provided for each organization member to sign, It outlines the possibility of their image(s) and/or identity being included on our blog in various capacities. On that note, we understand and respect anyone’s decision to remain anonymous should they request it.


Moving Forward

We understand that our journey will fluctuate as the project continues. Despite the communication delay with the community partner stalling our progress in achieving our project objectives, we are ambitious to be back on track. However, we are bracing ourselves for rough roads ahead, so…

“Passengers, this is your captain speaking,
please buckle up, it is going to be a wild ride…”

maxresdefault


 

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.