WEEKLY OBJECTIVES
This week’s objectives revolve around the construction of the survey that we will be sending out to the neighbourhood schools of Little Mountain, for the school administration to fill out. Our first objective is to come up with 10 comprehensive and informative questions that asks the administration about their expectations and future involvement in the upcoming community garden and questions regarding their existing school gardens. Once the first draft of the survey is finalized, our second objective is to create an online survey through SurveyMonkey and send out the survey link to our community partner, Joanne Mackinnon. After Joanne has reviewed our survey our third objective for this week will be to revise the survey and make any changes to it with the feedback we receive from Joanne.
What have we been able to achieve?
In this week we managed to achieve the first portion of our community project, to create a contact list of the school administrations for each neighbourhood school, used to send out the survey. We gathered the information by calling each school and giving a brief explanation of who we are (LFS 350 students), our involvement with our community project (create a survey for neighbourhood schools) and asking for their consent to participate in our survey. We also managed to clarify our goals and main focus for our project as a group after having an in depth discussion with our teaching team about our project proposal. We’ve begun to develop the questions for our survey, however we hope to achieve the first completed draft by the end of the week to give Joanne enough time to edit it and consult with the other partners about the survey we’ve developed.
REFLECTION ON THIS WEEK’S PROGRESS
We evaluated our progress based on the “What, So What, Now What” framework.
What
After our group presentation was completed, we were evaluated by one of our professors, Will Valley, whose feedback placed in a difficult position when determining the future of our project. Our initial presentation attempted to cover too many components and loosely tie them together in order to fulfill the requirements given to us by our community partner, however we were convulsing the purpose of our project and the critique we received enlightened us to reevaluate our perspective on our project. Our project’s primary objective is to improve food security in the neighbouring schools and community by utilizing the community garden, however this message was lost in the muddled presentation, similarly in the podcast presented by Lindiwe Sibanda, she attended a conference consisting of academics and hoped to discuss food security, however during the presentation it was obvious to her that maybe her perspective needs to be shifted (Sibanda, 2014). Likewise, our own group experienced similar perplexity after our presentation and this acted as the moment that made us reevaluate our priority.
So What
The feedback we recieved from our proposal presentation made us feel overwhelmed by the volume of questions as we realized that we might be going beyond the scope of our project. Our group was at risk of losing the main focus of the project and being unable to achieve our goals on time. Through conversations with our course instructor and teaching assistant, we expressed our difficulties and seeked out their guidance on subsequent steps to take. This relates to this week’s podcast on The Fish Bank, where the interactions between the fishermen and Sartin led to a better understanding of the problem and finally, finding a feasible together (Sartin, 2014).
Now What
We utilized the constructive feedbacks from our course instructor and teaching assistant to adjust the focus of our project. We have decided to narrow down our priorities to conducting a survey on neighbourhood schools’ existing school gardens and their expectations on the upcoming Little Mountain-Riley Park community garden. This will allow us to achieve the goals of this project. Furthermore, instead of making the Sustenance Festival as one of our priorities, our participation in the festival is now a tool towards understanding the community’s needs. This approach to community is in relation with Sisonke Msimang’s story in helping young people with AIDS (Msimang, 2014). As a pragmatic idealist, Sisonke believes that the public often has good intentions to help the community, however, we often forget the importance of empathy (Msimang, 2014). Listening and observing in empathy are what enable us as a group to capture the essence of the Little Mountain-Riley Park community and use this to bring positive impact through our project.
UPCOMING WEEK’S OBJECTIVE
After the completion of this week’s achievements, three more objectives are intended to be accomplished in the upcoming week. Firstly, we would like to finalize the final draft of our survey to be sent to school administration. The second objective is to send out the survey along with the consent form to the neighbourhood school administrations, who have agreed to participate in this project. Our third objective is to know more about the community, interact with the community members and view from their perspectives.
How are we going to achieve these objectives?
We intend to achieve the finalization of survey by modifying the survey with the constructive feedback from Joanne, our community partner, and her contacts. Also, we will be participating in the Sustenance Festival on October 18th by performing a bread workshop in Hillcrest Center. During the workshop, we can talk to community members, parents and children and get a better understanding of the community. Moreover, we will construct our consent form being sent to school administrations by putting project specific aims, objectives and methods for data collection.
WORKS CITED
Msimang, S. (2014, Dec 10). A Pragmatic Idealist. The Moth Podcast. Podcast retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/a-pragmatic-idealist
Sibanda, L.M. (2014, Dec 10). Grandma Mehambe’s Farm. The Moth Podcast. Podcast retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/grandma-mahembes-farm
Sartin, J. (2014, Dec 10). The Fish Bank. The Moth Podcast. Podcast retrieved from http://themoth.org/posts/stories/the-fish-bank