All posts by Jasmine Lee

Week 11: The Finale

During the last week of November, my team has been hard at work in finalizing the tasks associated with our project outcomes. The FAQ and scientific component for addition to the manual has been revised and would be ready to send off to our community partner along with our final report.  The final report is close to being completed; we have yet to proofread and fine-tune specific sections, such as the discussion, before it is ready for submission. Furthermore, we have been fulfilling the expectations of our blog webpage. My team found it difficult to upload pictures and other media of our CBEL experiences online due to the nature of our project (mostly literature review) and not having the opportunity to carry out and capture our community service learning.  Listening to other LFS 350 group’s plenary presentations during the previous week was helpful in assembling and delivering the final presentation. It has helped to highlight aspects that we should have considered while designing and carrying out our project as well as to suggest further community engagement activities for future groups continuing our work.  We also had the pleasure of Shona and Darlene from Fresh Choice Kitchens joining our class for our final CBEL presentation.  We appreciate that they were able to take the time to witness the product of our combined efforts over the course of three months. We are extremely grateful to Shona, Diane and Darlene for their time, resources, patience and feedback we received in making this project a success!

Final Presentation

After combining the interview responses with the results from our literature review into our discussion, we can conclude that food literacy does play a role in contributing to greater food security through empowering individuals in the community to improve their health by seeking greater resilience and social adversity. This is agreed by most of the interviewees who cited that home canning motivates others to preserve backyard grown fruits and vegetables, learn food preservation techniques and have a greater consciousness with regards to food consumption. Our literature review has also provided support for our findings with a notable article by Andress et al. (2011), who noted household’s increasing interest in long-term home preservation during times of food insecurity and the emergence of NCHFPP, a website that offered canning techniques and a self-study canning course that was created in response to the demand. Many of the registers cited food culture, food safety, home gardening, health & nutrition and economic self-sufficiency as motivators for participating in the online canning course; hence this implies the public’s interest to maintain food security through increasing food literacy (Andress et al., 2011). A significant aspect that emerged during our research and interviews is the importance of considering the cultural appropriateness of the canning workshops for the community. Incorporating culturally appropriate recipes is essential as it increases the application of techniques learned at home, which thereby promotes food security. Our team also drew up a list of recommendations that may be beneficial for similar projects with Fresh Choices Kitchens in the future. Some of the recommendations include developing different versions of the canning manual with different languages and corresponding cultural foods and uploading an electronic version of the FAQs and tutorial videos online. Future LFS 350 should organize a focus group, preferably with canning workshop participants, instead of individual interviews in order to gather more detailed responses and save time.

Each member of my team had a rewarding CBEL experience. Some of us reflected on learning to listen to the feedback and what the community needs rather than what you think they need, which in hindsight, could have reduced the number of miscommunications and problems when developing our research question.  Some found the interviews a very insightful experience as listening to the community facilitators opens up further possibilities of community engagement.  Others appreciated the opportunity to build social relationships with group members and the community through flexible learning.  Despite having to overcome the hurdles, our team learned quite a lot from our project, community partner and each other; we truly enjoyed our CBEL experience and would not have traded it for another project!

Yummy canned goods from Fresh Choice Kitchens -> all gone!

Week 10: Interview Results + Reflections

At last, our group has completed the final round of Skype interviews. The constructive feedback from the canning trainers and environmental health officers (EHO) have been taken into consideration as our group continues to improve the FAQ and the scientific component of the manual. We hope to ultimately develop a product with sufficient details, but is also clear, concise and understandable for the canning trainers.  For the final report, we have been conducting our literature review to support our analysis in the discussion. Most studies agree that the knowledge of home preservation or food literacy increases food security by reducing consumer spending, learning to prepare healthy meals from all food groups and practicing food safety. After compiling the interview responses, we found that all interviewees agree that educating people on home food preservation will improve their food literacy in terms of increasing their knowledge on food safety, nutritional aspects of canning ingredients and seasonality of fruits. On the other hand, most interviewees express that there is not a definite answer to the question regarding whether education on home food preservation contributes to improved food security. The fact whether people may actually apply food preservation techniques at home depends on a variety of factors, such as their economic status, access to equipment, time availability and residence. Currently, we are still reviewing the interview responses to further analyze the various factors, which may affect the likelihood of people preserving food at home.

During the week, we have discussed the layout and key points that we will be addressing for the plenary presentation. Since only three minutes are allocated for each group, it is impossible for every member to offer his or her contribution. Hence, both Nathan and Drew have volunteered to speak on our group’s behalf.  We also believe that it would only be fair if the other members assist the presenters by posting their results, interpretations and personal reflections online. Having devoted over two months of effort on this project, we are looking forward to showcasing our results to other LFS 350 groups on Wednesday!

Taken from McGill Publications

Much to our dismay, our group was unable to plan a second site visit to GVFBS last week due to conflicts in scheduling. We would have toured their warehouse and noted down the trends in the type of charitable foods donated over the years. Moreover, it would have been a great volunteer opportunity if we could participate and assist trainers with their canning workshops. It will have enabled us to better meet the needs of our community partner and the canning trainers by identifying which sections of the manual requires further explanation. Nevertheless, our interviews with the canning trainers may be considered as an indirect form of community engagement. We are not only including the voices from our group, but also from the canning trainers, EHOs and canning workshop participants (through the trainers’ feedback) when answering our research questions regarding food literacy and food security. Through this dialogue, my group can gain a better understanding of the barriers that food insecure individuals are facing in the community and the reasons that participants would choose to attend the canning workshops. Given that food literacy does increase food security, we hope that our findings and recommendations from this research project may assist our community partner and/or future groups to further address the issue of food security through home food preservation.

For the following week, we aim to complete our designated parts for the draft report by Sunday. The main points from our report will be used to formulate our final presentation. We will then meet on Monday to discuss and put together the powerpoint presentation.

One more week to go!

Week 7 & 8: Troubleshooting + Interviews

With October coming to an end, our group has been focused on completing the scientific component for the canning manual.  While reviewing the existing manual, we were surprised to find that most topics had already been covered in great detail, despite being written at a grade six level.  Thus, instead of introducing a new section, we believe that it would be more useful to provide the trainers and/or their trainees with a 2 to 3 paged summary, highlighting the major topics and expanding on the details with scientific principles. This summary is nearly complete and would be sent off before the interviews with the trainers.  Meanwhile, we have finalized the one-on-one interview times with the Fresh Choice Kitchen’s canning trainers. We are looking forward to speaking with the trainers in hopes of addressing the usability of the manual and answering our finalized research questions, which are:

“To what extent does educating people on home preservation contribute to a person’s food literacy (in the aspects of understanding how and where the food is produced)? How would this result in improving food security with regards to personal health?”

We have received plenty of constructive feedback from our community partner on the FAQ and our list of interview questions for the trainers.  While every group member could attest to our efforts in conducting extensive research Agreementand generating appropriate responses for the FAQ, we appreciate their feedback and agree there is opportunity for further improvement.  Due to the familiarity and frequent usage of the scholarly language on campus, we acknowledge that it was fairly difficult for us to determine whether the language was at the grade six level. Hence, it is interesting to see which sections we thought were understandable, but were in fact deemed relatively complex for our selected audience. On the other hand, our group was quite disappointed by their response regarding the interview questions. After directly discussing with our community partner, we understand that there was simply a miscommunication between both parties, which was resolved upon direct communication over the phone. Considering the importance of community consultation as emphasized by this week’s e-lecture by Ernesto Sirolli, my group is extremely grateful to Drew for offering to call and resolve the misunderstandings with Fresh Choice Kitchens.  At the end the conversation, we are happy to report that everyone is on the same page.  Our initial interview questions were replaced with a set of new interview questions that were created together with our community partner. There will be two questions dedicated to the usability of the manual and two for our research question.

Since the trainers are from different regions of BC, instead of a focus group discussion (which we have previously planned), we are going to interview the trainers individually via telephone. This will slightly be more time-consuming for us, but  it is beneficial in a way that the participants will not be affected by opinions of others, therefore eliminating the bias effect that a focus group might cause on the participants.

Teamwork and agreement

For the remainder of the week, our group will be making our second site visit at the GVFBS, where we will be conducting the one-on-one interviews with the canning trainers on Wednesday and wrap up on Thursday using Skype. The FAQ revision will also be done at that time with our community partner.  Throughout the next two weeks, we will be working on the final report and continue to review scientific journals. Once we have compiled the responses from the interviews, we can incorporate the findings to our final report.  Despite the approaching deadlines, we—as a team—are confident in overcoming any more challenges that may come our way!

Week 2: TRC Event + Update

Most classes were cancelled on Wednesday, September 18 – the first of the four days surrounding the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Vancouver. Launched in 2008, this was the last TRC held on the west coast; the last event will be held in Ottawa 2014.  TRC is a national-wide event to collect survivors’ testimonies and to inform the public about the impact of residential schools on Aboriginal communities. Multiple programs and events were taking place around the UBC campus and at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE).  Everyone was strongly encouraged to participate.  As UBC students who are using, studying and living on ancestral land from the Musqueams, it is only justified for us to learn more about the Aboriginals and hear their voice to what really happened during that grim period in Canadian history.  The stories told by the residential school survivors were quite upsetting. Children, as young as five, were forcibly separated from their communities and sent to the schools to assimilate to the mainstream Canadian society.  There were a great number of children who fell ill and did not return to their communities at all; mortality rates were over 50%. Even to this day, residential schools had a tremendous and profound impact on survivors as well as their communities. Survivors, recovering from sexual, physical and physiological abuse, had a difficult time integrating back to their communities and some were even passing the aggressive behavior down to their own families.

Taken from www.trc.ca

I believe that many of us might not have known about this dark history of Canada if classes had not been suspended. And indeed, I think this was quite successful in raising the awareness of students, parents, faculty members and the community alike to recognize the truth behind the residential school system. The TRC reminds us of the significance of communicating and connecting with the entire community, which is also relevant to what we learned about in class about social responsibility and connecting with others. Aboriginals are the first settlers to arrive and have generously offered to share their ancestral land for our benefits.  They are our neighbors, partners and teachers; there is actually so much we can learn from them. For instance, it is well-known that Aboriginals know the land the best and their traditional way of living harmoniously with nature can be applied to our Western lifestyle.  We should take the time to assist them in their long journey to recovery and cultural preservation since the Aboriginals are also a fundamental part of Canadian history.

If you want to understand more about the history of the residential school system, there is actually an exhibition on the St. Michael’s Residential School being held at the Museum of Anthropology right on the grounds of UBC. Check out this link for more information: http://moa.ubc.ca/experience/exhibit_details.php?id=1209

Here is our group’s update regarding the project!

Our first site visit, represented by Drew and Jasmine, with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society (GVFBS) on September 18 went exceptionally well.  We had the pleasure of meeting both the Manager and the Web Outreach of the Fresh Choice Kitchen Program. They mentioned that the GVFBS has recently launched a new mandate that not only focuses on providing nourishing emergency foods, but to better educate the public about safe food practices. Their wish is our LFS 350 group to incorporate the scientific portion to the “Train-the-Trainer” workshop with “usability” in mind in terms of language, literacy and geographical application, i.e. both Vancouver and Vernon. The course will be taught to a wide range of audience and should be understandable for those without a science background, i.e. food facilitators, health organizations, chefs, individuals with canning experience, Aboriginals and Environmental Health Officers. The questions that my group suggested during our first meeting were also answered at this time. One of the proposed volunteer opportunities appeared to very promising; it would involve sorting cans or warehouse products every few years.  Although “warehouse or can sorting” may sound mundane, the participant would be given the opportunity to witness the change in food donation choices over the years as there is a growing interest in nutritional eating. Our group promised to send our project’s timeline to GVFBS once we have our proposal finalized at our next group meeting.  To date, we have received an electronic copy of the current manual and are waiting for the compilation of questions that have already been answered.  See you the following week!