Blog Post 1: First Impressions

Introduction to the Community Kitchen Assessment for Kitsilano/Point Grey Neighborhoods

Our Interests and Goals

How is it that given our diverse backgrounds in nutrition, sport science, food market analysis, urban planning, and sustainable agriculture and planning, we chose a project on Community Kitchens? Above all, we wanted to work on a project that satisfies our academic backgrounds in diverse food systems disciplines and interests in how these can be incorporated into planning for better health, economies, and urban environments. Despite having different interests, we all seek for the same goal: to promote connection between people through healthy and nutritious food in the city. It was a tough choice, but to us the Community Kitchen project stands out the most as it is the perfect intersection of food production, food consumption and community engagement that requires collective knowledge from all of our team members.

Our project will seek information about the conditions of undocumented but publicly accessible kitchens in the West Point Grey and Kitsilano areas for the City of Vancouver Social Policy Department to create a sustainable food system of producing, processing, distributing and consuming that is in line with its Food Strategy. The food, nutrition, and health backgrounds of three of our team members, one of whom has a Food Safe Level 1 certification, will contribute to the assessment process. Given that the other half of our group has an academic background in planning and urban food systems, we will then be able to evaluate the community kitchens’ impacts on the resiliency, community connectedness, and food literacy of this neighbourhood and the greater Vancouver food system. The project is therefore demonstrative of how we can weave together various sub-disciplines in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems: nutrition, health education, food safety, local food movements, community involvement, food deserts, public spaces enabling food literacy, and food sovereignty. 

Our Project Objectives

  • Familiarize ourselves with the Vancouver Food Strategy and its impacts on the residents of Point Grey/Kitsilano
  • Learn more about food policy and the role of kitchens as an emerging food literacy source in cities
  • Inform positive improvements by gaining information about the status quo of community kitchens (i.e., physical conditions, quality of programming)
  • Understand how to conduct a formal assessment through surveys, interviews, site observation
  • Acquire understanding about the advantages and disadvantages of asset-based vs. need-based development frameworks in the context of assessing community kitchens

Our project comes under the umbrella of the Vancouver Food Strategy. Ultimately, the goal of our project is to inform the City of Vancouver the extent to which the existing community kitchens play a part in the development of a just, sustainable food system in their neighbourhood. The improvement of the kitchens` functions in the alignment with the city`s foci in food production, food processing and distribution, food access, resident empowerment and food waste management will be assessed.

Integrating Themes from Ernesto Siroli’s TED Talk and the Principles of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)  

In recent years we have seen a huge shift in the approach to social work, from a need-based focus to an asset-based development framework. Based on Sirolli’s TedTalk, by using this method in our kitchen assessments, we can avoid paternalism, through which we risk destroying what is already in place and oversimplifying a community’s complex problems. When we enter the community kitchen for our assessments, rather than first looking for flaws in the kitchen infrastructure or programming, we could ask the community members to tell us what has worked well, a technique known as “appreciative inquiry” (SOURCE: ABCD Reading week 1). Rather than worrying about what is missing, inefficient, or unsafe, we enter the project with a positive mindset and make the best use of our time for kitchen visitations. This way, we figure out how programming and infrastructure issues can be solved most effectively and draw from the talents of community members involved to make appropriate changes. It is unlikely that the community members running kitchens in Kitsilano or Point Grey will work with us if we label them as one in need or dismiss the progress they have made. As Sirolli indicates, we should be mindful to use positive language, engaging methods, and listening skills to allow a community to define its reality as one with assets to build upon. 

Our primary concern with the Community Kitchen project is that we will have to use a need-based assessment method to evaluate the kitchens’ conditions. Therefore, our challenge is reframing the kitchens’ shortcomings as having potential for improvements, and utilizing knowledge from the kitchens’ staff while minimizing our own subjective evaluation. Perhaps we could add in another survey, in which the community determines how well we applied the asset-based community development framework during our site visitations. The ultimate goal is to make use of, but not be steered away from asset-based community development by the conflicting nature of our assessment survey. 

Sources

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

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