Author Archives: sashka warner

Blog Post #4

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Using Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model to assess the project experience:

What?

The main focus of LFS 350 was to provide an opportunity for us as students to engage in the community and gain hands-on experience working with issues of community food security in a community setting. Our group gained this experience by working with the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISS of BC) and immigrant seniors living in the Guildford area to create an asset map to help address food insecurity issues within the Arabic-speaking immigrant community in the Guildford area. Our role as an LFS 350 team was to gather information from Arabic-speaking group of seniors living in the area so as to construct an asset map which could be used by new immigrants in the Guildford area to locate stores providing affordable and culturally-appropriate foods.

The primary roadblocks faced by the group were due to communication issues. Our primary means of communication was through email and it took time to communicate with the community partners and coordinate meetings with the seniors and ISS of BC. We also experienced minor difficulties when planning for the cooking session with the seniors. For example, it was difficult to decide who would grocery shop as everyone had extremely busy schedules and most of us commuted. We overcame this by dividing the work such that students living on or near campus completed the shopping.

This was a great learning experience for us in terms of planning. As Shulman mentions, “without a certain amount of anxiety and risk […] there’s a limit to how much learning occurs” (Shulman, 2005).

In this way, Shulman (2005) asserts that professional education contributes to skilled professional practice, and learning will be limited without uncertainty present in the process. In turn, we faced the risk of failing to recognize the knowledge and work of the seniors as well as the needs of ISS of BC via creating an insufficient map product. The completed map product will hopefully assist new immigrants to Canada, which thus places a higher degree of anxiety and risk upon the project process.

So what?

This experience taught us that we should have better deadlines and all group members should respond to new sources of information provided by the community members punctually so that the person communicating with the community partner could make plans with the community partner involving the group as a whole. The experience also taught us that communication and research involving large groups of people may be dynamic and require changes in inquiry strategy. As Steven Levitt argues in the podcast Failure is Your Friend, through failure success will eventually emerge (Cohn, 2015). For instance, the initial approach of asking open-ended questions to the group of seniors proved inefficient and it was necessary to develop an alternative system of data collection via a tally/vote system which was successful.

Now what?

Ultimately, our group achieved a successful outcome via gathering beneficial knowledge from the seniors and providing the ISS of BC with an asset map of affordable/culturally-appropriate food resources in the Guildford region. In future group work, one of the responsibilities of one or several of the individuals could be to design an allocation of responsibilities for each individual group member based on relative strengths of the individual group members. According to Phillips (2014), a group of diverse people are more open minded and capable of solving tough challenges. The person coordinating the allocation of tasks could take Phillips’s argument into account via sending a survey to each group member regarding personal strengths and using the course calendar and list of assignments to create a task list for each group member suited to each group member’s potential for contribution to the project. By creating a collaborative work environment, we can create positive, significant and long-term differences in communities.

In turn, further beneficial work may be done by working further with the seniors to identify knowledge from the community which may be beneficial to new immigrants and to further assess food resources throughout the lower mainland in terms of affordability and cultural appropriateness to a variety  of groups from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. The usefulness of the asset map will need to be tested (ie via feedback from new immigrants) and subsequent refinements to the asset map could be made to better serve the community. In turn, changes in the distribution of food assets will need to be incorporated into the map so as to ensure the longevity of the map’s utility in serving new immigrants. By continuing to recognize the knowledge present in the immigrant community in Surrey, efforts to map food assets can be bolstered via the identification of successful strategies and map layouts and the incorporation of further experiences of new immigrants to the area to combat food insecurity for new immigrants to Canada.

Works cited:

Cohn, G. (2015, May 20). Failure is Your Friend. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/

Phillips, K. W. (2014). How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

Blog Post #3

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Weekly Objectives and Achievements:

Week 8 (March 6th)

Objectives:

  • Send a team from our group to visit the stores identified by the senior immigrants during the Feb. 14th meeting.
  • Assess the accessibility and proximity of the stores identified by the senior immigrants.
  • Verify the nutritional suitability, cost and cultural appropriateness of food within the stores identified by the seniors.
  • Begin first draft of asset map with data gleaned from field research.
  • Confirm dates with ISS of BC for the future cooking day with the seniors.

Achievements:

  • Team of students successfully visited stores identified by the senior immigrants.
  • Students collected data describing the diversity, quality, and culturally appropriateness of foods sold in the stores of interest based on criteria and key food items identified by the senior immigrants at the Feb. 14th meeting.
  • Students collected data evaluating the accessibility of the stores of interest.
  • Began first stage of mapping process (chose appropriate mapping software, identified area of interest).
  • Worked with LFS 350 course facilitators and ISS of BC to establish date and logistical arrangements for cooking with the senior immigrants.

Week 9 (March 13):

Objectives:

  • Prepare first draft of asset map to give to ISS of BC and the senior immigrants so that we can receive feedback from the seniors as to the quality and utility of the map product.
  • Meet with kitchen manager to facilitate the process of cooking with the seniors.
  • Secure funds for purchasing foods for the cooking session.

Reflections on Moment of Significant Change Workshop:

In the Moment of Significant Change Workshop our group identified key moments in the process of the project thus far that have seemed momentous and/or dynamic. We additionally evaluated these moments in terms of change in knowledge as well as change in emotions/passion/inspiration. The first graph of the moments of significant change in terms of knowledge is provided below:

The first moment of significant knowledge change identified by our group was the initial meeting with ISS of BC. This meeting expanded our understanding of the background of ISS of BC as well as the context for the needs and challenges faced by the populations of immigrants in question. This meeting also clarified project details (we learned that Newton would not be a focus of the study) and group responsibilities (ie deliverables and project timeline). This meeting furthermore yielded the fact that we would have to receive background checks to participate in the project. We were able to complete the background check process relatively smoothly, but learning of this requirement in the meeting changed our perception of the timeline and challenges of the project as we had to complete the background check process prior to meeting with the senior immigrants. Another moment of significant knowledge change as identified by our group was the meeting with the senior immigrants. This meeting was hugely beneficial as the seniors provided our group with a wealth of information as to where to locate the best food resources in relation to the project. With the help of the senior immigrants through a voting survey our group was able to record key locations of stores that would be essential for the asset mapping process. Moreover, the seniors kindly provided further information describing the benefits and drawbacks of each store identified. By the time the meeting was over, we had compiled a detailed list of key foods important to the senior immigrants as well as the corresponding locations in which to find these key foods. The seniors furthermore described the relative affordability of the foods at each store and identified commonly-used bus routes. Through this meeting we were able to eliminate various stores in the area from our search due to affordability, accessibility and cultural suitability concerns. In turn, one interesting finding of the meeting was that the majority of the seniors at the meeting were Christian and thus did not have priorities for finding halal foods. Our previous understanding of the project was to map primarily stores that sold halal foods, so this meeting enlightened our understanding as to the actual needs and wishes of the senior immigrants. A further moment of significant knowledge change identified by our group was that of the field research process. This point in the project tested our ability to verify the results of the meeting with the seniors via using our food systems understanding to evaluate the stores in question for relative cost, accessibility and cultural suitability. In turn, knowledge gained from this process is essential for the map-making process. An additional possible moment of knowledge change as identified by our group was the date for cooking with the seniors. This cooking session will possibly provide a fount of knowledge as to cultural food traditions practiced and retained by the senior immigrants. In this way, the cooking session will likely result in a significant knowledge exchange between the senior immigrants and our group as to diverse perspectives and realities of food systems as related to different cultures and geographic regions.

The second graph of the moments of significant emotion/passion/inspiration change is provided below:

The first moment of significant emotion/passion/inspiration change identified by our group was the first meeting with ISS of BC. This meeting served to convey concrete information as to the challenges faced by immigrants and refugees to BC, and our group felt an emotional connection to the difficult realities discussed by ISS of BC of life for immigrants in BC. In turn, our group felt an emotional connection to the positive stories of bonds formed between within the immigrant community and with regards to the employees and volunteers of ISS of BC. This meeting served to provide an emotional incentive for conducting the project and brought our perspective of the project from outside of academia to the real world. The next moment of significant emotional change as identified by our group was that of the meeting with the senior immigrants. This meeting further served to put faces to the “target population” of our project. Our group members felt a positive emotional response to meeting with the seniors. At times it was awkward and challenging to communicate with the seniors due to lingual challenges. However, the moments of understanding gleaned from this exchange were intensely satisfying and positive. In turn, knowing the names and a little of the character of the seniors helped provide further incentive for our group to produce a useful map product so as to benefit the seniors who had nicely spent several hours going through minute details such as the comparative price of lemon peel at stores in Surrey. This meeting further tied the project to the real world, and the positive experience of our group members at the meeting fostered drive in our group to produce a useful and well-researched asset map.

In Ron Finley’s TED Talk, we learned about the struggles of living in a Food Desert. He talks about his area in South Central LA and how there are more fast food establishments than grocery stores, and how obesity is an epidemic that has plagued his community. He said that people are dying more from obesity than drive-by shootings and that he took action by planting gardens in vacant lots. After dealing with some backlash from the local government and police, he won his case and was able to continue planting gardens, growing his own food. The initial state of his community has some parallels with the Guilford area for the Immigrants. When driving in the Guilford area, we saw many fast food institutions, and fewer grocery stores, even fewer Halal grocery stores. As such, the Immigrants may find themselves lost and unable to find appropriate foods, but they also may have a hard time finding healthy options as well because of the food desert attributes of the area. It would be interesting to see if the seniors would be interested in learning to grow their own food like Ron Finley, as that would be a great community building exercise as well as a way to gain some autonomy and independence over their situation in the area, especially for newcomers (Ron Finley).

Strategy for Successful Project Completion (The Graceful Dismount):
Our strategy for successful project completion hinges on finishing the initial draft of the asset map by mid-next week so as to be able to provide the map draft to the seniors. Hopefully the seniors will be able to look at our work so far and give us useful feedback as to the utility and validity of our map. At the cooking session we will discuss the map in person with the seniors so as to make sure that our final product will be of use to the immigrant population in question. With this feedback from the senior immigrants we can refine our map product so as to reflect the desires of the seniors and hopefully better align the usefulness of the map to benefit incoming immigrants and refugees. To facilitate this cooking session we must coordinate with the kitchen manager and UBC so as to ensure our access to and proper use of the kitchen as well as to secure the funds necessary to purchase food for the cooking session. The final map must be completed in the next several weeks, so we must work diligently to complete the initial map draft so that our draft can be augmented by feedback from the seniors and possible additional field research necessary to create the final map product.

In addition to our schedule, in consideration of the University of Memphis module on Power and Privilege, we have to take into account our relative privilege as native english speakers who have grown up in Canada (some of us) and the knowledge that is “common” to us but not necessarily “common” to newcomers. In that sense we need to make sure that we outline bus routes very clearly in an accessible way (UofM: Power and Privilege).

We are very excited for what is to come and we will keep you updated in the final stages of our project!

References: “Module 2 – Engaged Scholarship.” University of Memphis. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2017.